This is the first part of a two-part series. Next week:“Baluchistan and FATA in Pakistan.”

The growing violence throughout Pakistan since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the Winter of 2001, the November 2008 attack on Mumbai, India, and many other smaller terrorist-directed killings in India, and the gruesome killing of at least 70 top Bangladeshi Army officers in a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed last month, were evidence that the terrorists have declared war against the sovereign nation-states in South Asia. The only bright spot in this context is Sri Lanka, where a powerful terrorist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the Tamil Tigers, are about to lose their home base. That, however, may not end the LTTE terrorism, particularly since it is headquartered in London, where many South Asian terrorists are maintained in separate cages for future use by British intelligence, with the blessings of Her Majesty’s Service.

Since none of the South Asian countries, where the terrorists are gaining ground, have, so far, shown the ability to evaluate, and thus, eliminate, the growth of this terrorism, it is necessary to know its genesis, and how it has affected the leaders of the South Asian nations to the detriment of their respective security. What is evident is that the South Asian terrorism has little to do with territorial disputes among nations, but everything to do with the past British colonial rule which poisoned the minds of the locals, so they have become disloyal to their own countries.

In this article, we will deal with the terrorism that continues to prosper in India’s northeast; and the terrorism in Sri Lanka, brought about by the British-induced ethnic animosity among its citizens. This history is the narration of a tragedy, since those who fought for independence in these South Asian nations, made enormous sacrifices to bring about their independence; many of those heroic figures turned out to be mental slaves of the British Empire, and pursued relentlessly the policies that the British had implemented to run their degenerate Empire.

India’s Northeast

Six decades after India wrested independence from its colonial rulers, its northeast region is a cauldron of trouble. Located in a highly strategic area, with land contiguous to five countries—Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and China—it is full of militant separatists, who take refuge in the neighboring countries under pressure from Indian security forces. Since most of these neighboring countries do not have the reach to control the border areas, the separatist groups have set up armed training camps, which, over the years, have attracted international drug and gun traffickers. As a result of such unrelenting terrorist actions, and violent demonstrations over the last five decades, this part of India remains today a dangerous place.

These secessionist groups were not created by New Delhi, although New Delhi failed to understand that the promotion of ethnic, sub-ethnic, and tribal identities were policies of the British, who had come to India to expand their empire. The British Empire survived, and then thrived, through identification, within the subcontinent, of various ethnic and sub-ethnic groups and their conflict points; and then, exploited those conflict points to keep the groups divided and hostile to each other.

India and the other South Asian nations failed to comprehend that it was suicidal to allow a degenerate colonial power to pursue such policies against their nations. As a result, they were carried out by New Delhi for two ostensible reasons: One, to appease the militants, and the other, to “allow them to keep” what they wanted— their sub-national ethnic identity. The policy deprived the majority of the people of the Northeast of the justification for identifying themselves as Indians.

The die was cast in the subversion of the sovereignty of an independent India by the British Raj in 1862, when it laid down the law of apartheid, to isolate “the tribal groups.” The British came into the area in the 1820s, following the Burmese conquest of Manipur and parts of Assam. The area had become unstable in the latter part of the 18th Century, following the over-extension of the Burmese-based Ahom kingdom, which reached into Assam. The instability caused by the weakening of the Ahom kingdom prompted the Burmese to move to secure their western flank. But the Burmese action also helped to bring in the British. The British East India Company was lying in wait for the Ahom kingdom to disintegrate.

The Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-26 ended with a British victory. By the terms of the peace treaty signed at Yandaboo on Feb. 24, 1826, the British annexed the whole of lower Assam and parts of upper Assam (now Arunachal Pradesh). The Treaty of Yandaboo provided the British with the foothold they needed to annex Northeast India, launch further campaigns to capture Burma’s vital coastal areas, and gain complete control of the territory from the Andaman Sea to the mouth of the Irrawaddy River. What were London’s motives in this venture? The British claimed that their occupation of the northeast region was required to protect the plains of Assam from “tribal outrages and depredations and to maintain law and order in the sub-mountainous region.”

The ‘Apartheid Law’

Following annexation of Northeast India, the first strategy of the British East India Company toward the area was to set it up as a separate entity. At the outset, British strategy toward Northeast India was:

• to make sure that the tribal people remained separated from the plains people, and the economic interests of the British in the plains were not disturbed;

• to ensure that all tribal aspirations were ruthlessly curbed, by keeping the bogeyman of the plains people dangling in their faces; and,

• to ensure the tribal feudal order remained intact, with the paraphernalia of tribal chiefs and voodoo doctors kept in place. Part of this plan was carried out through the bribing of tribal chiefs with paltry gifts.

Lord Palmerston’s Zoo

The British plan to cordon off the northeast tribal areas was part of its policy of setting up a multicultural human zoo, during the 1850s, under the premiership of Henry Temple, the third Viscount Palmerston. Lord Palmerston, as Henry Temple was called, had three “friends”—the British Foreign Office, the Home Office, and Whitehall.

The apartheid program eliminated the Northeast Frontier Agency from the political map of India, and segregated the tribal population from Assam, as the British had done in southern Africa and would later do in Sudan. By 1875, British intentions became clear, even to those Englishmen who believed that the purpose of Mother England’s intervention in India, and the Northeast in particular, was to improve the conditions of the heathens. In an 1875 intelligence document, one operative wrote: “At this juncture, we find our local officers frankly declaring that our relations with the Nagas could not possibly be on a worse footing than they were then, and that the non-interference policy, which sounds excellent in theory, had utterly failed in practice.”

Apartheid also helped the British to function freely in this closed environment. Soon enough, the British Crown introduced another feature: It allowed Christian missionaries to proselytize among the tribal population and units of the Frontier Constabulary. The Land of the Nagas was identified as “virgin soil” for planting Christianity.

“Among a people so thoroughly primitive, and so independent of religious profession, we might reasonably expect missionary zeal would be most successful,” stated the 1875 document, as quoted in the “Descriptive Account of Assam,” by William Robinson and Angus Hamilton.

Missionaries were also encouraged to open government-aided schools in the Naga Hills. Between 1891 and 1901, the number of native Christians increased 128%. The chief proselytizers were the Welsh Presbyterians, headquartered in Khasi and the Jaintia Hills.British Baptists were given the franchise of the Mizo (Lushai) and Naga Hills, and the Baptist mission was set up in 1836.

British Mindset Controlled New Delhi

Since India’s Independence in 1947, the Northeast has been split up into smaller and smaller states and autonomous regions. The divisions were made to accommodate the wishes of tribes and ethnic groups which want to assert their sub-national identity, and obtain an area where the diktat of their little coterie is recognized.

New Delhi has yet to comprehend that its policy of accepting and institutionalizing the superficial identities of these ethnic, linguistic, and tribal groups has ensured more irrational demands for even smaller states. Assam has been cut up into many states since Britain’s exit. The autonomous regions of Karbi Anglong, Bodo Autonomous Region, and Meghalaya were all part of pre-independence Assam. Citing the influx of Bengali Muslims since the 1947 formation of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971, the locals demand the ouster of these “foreigners” from their soil.

Two terrorist groups in Assam, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the National Democratic front of Bodoland (NDFB) (set up originally as the Bodo Security Force), are now practically demanding “ethnic cleansing” in their respective areas. To fund their movements, both the ULFA and the NDFB have been trafficking heroin and other narcotics, and indulging in killing sprees against other ethnic groups and against Delhi’s law-and-order machinery. Both these groups have also developed close links with other major guerrilla-terrorist groups operating in the area, including the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Muivah) and the People’s Liberation Army in Manipur. In 1972, Meghalaya was carved out of Assam through a peaceful process. Unfortunately, peace did not last long in this “abode of the clouds.” In 1979, the first violent demonstration against “foreigners” resulted in a number of deaths and arson. The “foreigners” in this case were Bengalis, Marwaris, Biharis, and Nepalis, many of whom had settled in Meghalaya decades ago. By 1990, firebrand groups such as the Federation of Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo People (FKJGP), and the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) came to the fore, ostensibly to uphold the rights of the “hill people” from Khasi, Jaintia, and the Garo hills. Violence erupted in 1979, 1987, 1989, and 1990. The last violent terrorist acts were in 1992.

Similar “anti-foreigner” movements have sprouted up across the Northeast, from Arunachal Pradesh in the East and North, to Sikkim in the West, and Mizoram and Tripura in the South. Along the Myanmar border, the states of Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram remain unstable and extremely porous.

While New Delhi was busy maintaining the status quo in this area by telling the tribal and ethnic groups that India is not going to take away what the British Raj had given to them, Britain picked the Nagas as the most efficient warriors (also, a large number of them had been converted to Christianity by the Welsh missionaries), and began arming and funding them. The British connection to the NSCN existed from the early days of the Naga National Council. Angami Zapu Phizo, the mentor of both factions of the NSCN, had led the charge against the Indian government, spearheading well-organized guerrilla warfare. Phizo left Nagaland hiding in a coffin. He then turned up in 1963 in Britain, holding a Peruvian passport. It is strongly suspected that the British Baptist Church, which is very powerful in Nagaland, is the contact between British intelligence and the NSCN terrorists operating on the ground at the time.

‘Dirty Bertie’ and the Nagas

Once Phizo arrived in Britain, Lord Bertrand (“Dirty Bertie”) Russell, the atheist, courted Phizo, and became his new friend. Russell was deeply impressed with Phizo’s “earnestness” for a peaceful settlement. What, perhaps, impressed Russell the most is that Phizo had control over the militant Nagas, who had launched a movement in the mid-1950s under the Naga National Council (NNC) to secede from the Indian Republic. In a letter dated Feb. 12, 1963, Sir Bertrand told Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, “I find it hard to understand the difficulty of coming to an agreement which would put an end to the very painful occurrences incidental to the present policy of India.”

It is believed in some circles that New Delhi’s 1964 ceasefire with the Nagas might have been influenced by the letter from Russell that was handed to Nehru by Rev. Michael Scott. Scott later went to Nagaland as part of a peace mission, along with two senior Indian political leaders.

While Russell was pushing Nehru to make the Nagas an independent country through peaceful negotiations, British involvement in direct conflict continued. On Jan. 30, 1992, soldiers of the Assam Rifles arrested two British nationals along the Nagaland-Burma border. David Ward and Stephen Hill posed as members of BBC-TV, and were travelling in jeeps with Naga rebels carrying arms. Subsequent interrogation revealed that both were operatives of Naga Vigil, a U.K.-based group. Both Ward and Hill claimed that they started the organization while in jail, influenced by Phizo’s niece, Rano Soriza. Both have served six-year prison terms for various crimes in Britain. Naga Vigil petitioned for their release in the Guwahti High Court. Phizo’s niece took up the issue with then-Nagaland Chief Minister Vamuzo.

Sri Lanka’s Violent Ethnic Strife

In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tiger terrorist group is in its last throes. Ousted by the Sri Lankan Army from almost all of its “claimed” territories, the militants are now holding on to about 19 square kilometers of land, with about 70,000 Sri Lankan citizens, mostly of Tamil ethnic origin, as their hostages. It is evident that they will be totally routed by the end of this month.

While the U.S. Pacific Command personnel in contact with New Delhi are formulating an evacuation plan for the hostages, London and the European Union are trying to protect the last vestiges of Tiger territory by urging Colombo to work out a cease fire with the terrorists.

The emergence of violent conflict between the Tamil Sri Lankans and the Sinhala Sri Lankans, which gave birth to the London-backed Tamil Tigers, was yet another product of the British colonial legacy. This ethnic conflict, which has engulfed this little island, and unleashed unlimited violence in the region for almost three decades, is, as in the case of Northeast India, due to the British mindset of the Sri Lankan and Indian leaders involved in “resolving “the crisis.

To begin with, Sri Lanka (then, Ceylon) had the misfortune to be colonized by three brutal European colonial powers—the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British. Nonetheless, it is to the credit of the locals that they withstood these brutes and prevented the break-up of the country.

After the Dutch ceded Sri Lanka in the 1801 Peace of Amiens, it became Britain’s first crown colony. Immediately, the British colonials started setting up the chess pieces. The ruling Kandyan King, of Tamil ancestry, was ousted with the help of local chieftains of Tamil and Sinhala origin. The coup set up the British crown as the new King.

As part of the “divide and rule” policy, the British colonials promoted the Buddhist religion, resulting in the 1817 Uva rebellion. The Buddhist religion was given protection by the Crown, and the people were told that Christianity would not be imposed on the unwilling masses as had happened during Portuguese and Dutch rule. Following the quelling of the rebellion, the British did what they do best: They carried out one of the worst massacres of the 19th Century, wiping out all able-bodied Sinhalese men from the Hill Country, and 80% of the native population of able-bodied, according to one report. The Kandyan Kingdom was the kingdom of both the Tamils and Sinhalas—both these groups came from India to settle on that island.

One specific impact of the British colonial presence was the emergence of English as the local language, undermining both the Sinhala and Tamil languages. According to one historian, the two most important effects observed during British rule were: one, by the start of 20th Century, the English language became the passport to getting employment; and those who had an English education became dominant in Britain’s handcrafted Sri Lankan society. Due to input of the Christian missionaries, more minority Tamils could read and write English, as opposed to the southern Sinhalese and Kandyan Sinhalese.

The other observed impact on Sri Lankan society of British colonial rule, was the reconstituting of the Legislative Assembly. The Assembly of 1921 had 12 Sinhalese and 10 non-Sinhalese, at a time when the Sinhalese constituted more than 70% of the population. Things changed in 1931, when, out of 61 seats, the Sinhalese won 38. This troubled the Tamils, because they had had special privileges under British, and never wanted to accept the dominance of the Sinhalese majority.

In addition, the British also brought to the island a million workers of Tamil ethnic background from Tamil Nadu, and made them indentured laborers in the Hill Country. This was in addition to the million Tamils already living in the provinces, and another million Mappilla Muslims, whose mother tongue is Tamil. Thus, the British sowed seeds of ethnic discord. During the colonial rule, the minority Tamils had a disproportionate representation in the bureaucracy.

The Role of British Assets in Independent Sri Lanka

However, when in 1948, the British finally left the island, they left behind their assets, in powerful places, many of whom were educated at Oxford-Cambridge, and some of whom had adopted Christianity, on both sides of the ethnic divide London had so carefully created.

Instead of seizing the opportunity to build the nation and set about undoing the misdeeds they were forced to carry out under British rule, beginning in the 1950s, Sinhalese-dominated governments implemented public policies that would institutionalize the majority community’s dominance. Sinhala was declared to be the country’s sole official language; Buddhism was favored as the state religion; and the unitary nature of the state ensured Sinhalese political domination. Major Sinhalese-Tamil riots in 1956, 1981, and 1983 further heightened Tamil insecurities.

Meanwhile, the Tamils began to press for autonomy. Political parties, such as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), utilized conventional means, which included participating in coalition governments. Militant Tamils, the LTTE, sought the creation of an independent Tamil state, referred to as Tamil Eelam, which would comprise the North and East of the country.

Throughout the 1980s, various Tamil rebel groups engaged in attacks against the Colombo government and its security apparatus. However, the situation worsened on that island because of the British mindset of New Delhi, which made a number of attempts to intervene in the violent Sri Lankan situation. Besides helping the Tamils to get armed training and intelligence, New Delhi, under late-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, deployed around 50,000 Indian peacekeepers (IPKF) in Tamil areas in Sri Lanka to help ensure peace. In return, the Sri Lankan government agreed to devolve power to the North and East through the creation of autonomous provincial councils.

Neither Colombo nor the Tamil militants were sincere about the deal; both were looking at the Indian troops as the barriers against their independent state. The failure of the Indian intervention led to more deaths and the assassination of Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, and India’s Rajiv Gandhi, among many other high-level Sri Lankan officials, by the terrorist Tamil Tigers.

London: Break Up India into 100 Hong Kongs

But, the British were in the middle of all this. Besides the fact that the LTTE was headquartered in London, and raising most of its illegitimate funds from Britain and its former colonies in Australia, South Africa, and Canada, within ten days of Gandhi’s death, Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who would be assassinated by the LTTE in May 1993, forced the hasty departure from Sri Lanka of British High Commissioner David Gladstone. The charge was that Gladstone, a descendant of the Victorian-age Prime Minister William Gladstone, was interfering in local election politics. But he had also been criticized earlier for allegedly meeting with known drug traffickers in Sri Lanka. Gladstone, who had previously spent years in the Middle East, was a known British intelligence link to the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, which was involved in training both the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and the LTTE

Britain’s continuing intent to break up India was also expressed openly in this political context. On May 26, 1991, only five days after the British-controlled LTTE-led assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the Times of London, the premier voice for the British Foreign Office, put forward this view in an editorial entitled “Home Truths”: “There are so many lessons to be learnt from sorrowing India, and most are being muttered too politely. The over-huge federation of almost 900 million people spreads across too many languages, cultures, religions, and castes. It has three times as many often incompatible and thus resentful people as the Soviet Union, which now faces the same bloody strains and ignored solutions as India. . . .

“The way forward for India, as for the Soviet Union, will be to say a great prize can go to any States and sub-States that maintain order without murders and riots. They should be allowed to disregard Delhi’s corrupt licensing restrictions, run their own economic policies, and bring in as much foreign investment and as many free-market principles as they like. Maybe India’s richest course from the beginning would have been to split into 100 Hong Kongs

INTRODUCTION:India portraying itself a secular and peace loving country to the world is a mocking style and a mask drawn to shield her monstrous activities architected by the RAW. Though the foreign companies are pushing the economy of India to bring her in league with the superpowers but its hegemonic nature and imperialistic attitude having disparaging niche towards the South Asia and other neighbouring countries in the surroundings has always become victim to the tautness atmosphere created by her.

India is following the footprints of Israel having militarized adventurism in West Asia, is in consonance with the historic juxtaposition of one and the other to incline towards the U.S. to implement its hegemonic will in South Asia. Bangladesh and Pakistan are mostly at receiving end of India’s launching of multi projects on the rivers which flow through her to turn their land in to desert apart from erection of the fences on border of both the countries. Sri Lankan and Tamils both have suffered at the hands of India, experiencing its intriguing imperialism, as when Tamil Tigers were being trained & equipped by RAW, simultaneously the government of India was showing her muscles to Sri Lanka to purchase weapons from not other than India and also while leaving the choice of armament to her. In 1980s dispatch of Indian Peace Keeping Force to Sri Lanka was a brutal act parallel to the sovereignty and integrity of an independent state.

The small nations like Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan are forced to act in a manner like a servant to the master who is totally disregardful to the rights of people. Indian military presence and ensuing human rights abuses in Kashmir is well known to the world where she is bent upon turning the heaven of Kashmir in to cemetery. Where India’s regional hegemony is dressed in conspiring knavery and dual diplomacy, Tibet remains sandwiched in the hypocritical fashion designed by the same. India came off badly when in 1962 picked up a fight and was bitten severely by the Dragon thus accepting the claim of China over Tibet.

KANGAROOING DALAI LAMA

India after having been defeated morally, materially and psychologically by China in 1962 has extended open arms for America to face the dilemma of Tibet to prick the dragon and within her own ability kangarooed Dalai Lama to house in Dharamsala since 1959. The Dalai Lama’s flee to India and formulation of “Government-In-Exile” has brought India in the forefront to face the noose of China. India now is home to approximately 120,000 Tibetans, the world’s largest community outside of Tibet.

The RAW has since long been trying to crown Dalai Lama as the head of state instead of simply a spiritual leader who remains contended with his sayings. That is very important for China to hold Tibet as its part, if lost then will break the fabrics of nationhood. There is a fear that if Tibet gets independence then Uighurs and Taiwan will want independence, as says the expert on China’s affairs, Adam Segal. RAW is exerting its all out efforts to train the rebellion groups of Tibetan refugees to use them against China to heal its wounds of lost war. The training pertains to the small arms fire, physical fitness and the guerilla operations.

The men are given money as an incentive to join the force to prepare them for the future operations to be launched in Tibet, exactly on the lines of Mukti Bahnis used in East Pakistan. The most favourable side is that Tibetan refugees are being motivated & brain washed by the RAW to carry the wrath and venom against China who booted them out of their homeland. Moreover being son of the soil the force of Tibetan refugees can sustain the rigours of worst weather conditions and hostile terrain unlike India which withered away due to the extreme weather conditions and the unfriendly mountains when conducted operations against China in 1962. Kangarooing old Dalai Lama of 75 years age for so many years is a burden being felt by India and now seriously looking forward for his death and searching for the successor who takes the interests of India as supreme.

INDIAN XENOPHOBIA

Since its birth Indian xenophobia within and without its territories is an aiguilles. India has succeeded in attracting the United States and the West to exert pressure on China while keeping Tibetans in exile in front to foment its dual policy. During the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency covertly had funded and armed Tibetan guerilla forces to fight against communist China. But even during this period also Washington never supported Tibet openly thus moving cautiously to avoid jumping in to the ambers ignited by India. In 1971, CIA stopped funding the guerilla forces as the aid was being provided through India which complicated the policy environment.

After seeing the whole affair a flop and the deprivation of monetary benefits from the U.S., India launched a new strategy of pushing the old hag like Dalai Lama to visit and make speeches in the West to fetch some fortune. This strategic initiative went successful due to the addresses made by Dalai Lama before the Human Rights Forums in Washington as well as in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. But India got annoyed when publicly Dalai Lama accepted something less than independence for Tibet. Calling for genuine autonomy for Tibet to rest within the framework of China having the domain of Foreign Affairs and the Defense but the domestic affairs should be dealt by the same old ladder of Dalai Lamas which was called the Middle Way Approach.

Though the middle way approach was applauded by all the spheres even by Hollywood actors like Richard Gere but India could not tolerate this issue be ever resolved that too, for carrying the baby kangaroo of Tibet in its sack for so many years without injuring the Dragon. May it be South Asia, Northeast Asia or even Tibet, Indian xenophobia is a serpent always ready to gobble the peace.

FRACAS WITH CHINA

The first Tibetan uprising of 1959 resulted in the flight of the Dalai Lama and about 80,000 Tibetans. In 1978, when Deng Xioping came in to power in China, he came up with a new idea of resolving the issue of Tibet. Besides reaching out to Dalai Lama in exile in India, the Chinese authorities also initiated a more conciliatory ethnic and economic development policy. Tibetans were encouraged to revitalize their culture and religion. Infrastructure was developed to help Tibet grow. But India always stood against all these measures whenever these were put to practice by the Chinese authorities while playing the card of Tibetan refugees.

To beat back the Indian propaganda and Tibetan shield, a programme of rapid economic development was adopted which included induction of non-Tibetans, mostly Han Chinese, in to Tibet. This Beijing hopes, will form a new generation which will be sound enough to face the religious and ethnic exploitation spread by India generally painting a ghostly picture of Tibet to the world. Tibetan refugees, mostly the youth are indulging in the business of narcotics, drug trafficking and arms selling. They were purposely kept illiterate, so to write on the clean slate of their mental canvass as wished by the RAW to make them robots to take the revenge of Indian defeat. But this fracas with China has now brought India on the brim of a ditch and ready to make her fall in to it when Tibetan refugees force will turn the direction of their guns provided by the RAW.

POLITICAL CATHARSIS

The political catharsis prevails in Tibet. The question of political status is imbedded in an atmosphere of uncertainty. The name Tibet is acceptable to China only to satisfy the Western block and Central areas, the area which now is called Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). This area was directly ruled by the Lhasa government when China occupied in 1950. But Tibetan exiles on behest of India are demanding a Greater Tibet which includes political Tibet in modern era and also an ethnic Tibetan areas east of TAR, most of which Tibet had lost in the eighteenth century. These areas, earlier known as Amdo and Kham, are now spread among parts of Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu. In March 2008, anti-government protests which had started in Lhasa soon spread among the ethnic Tibetan provinces. The Chinese are fully aware that Dalai Lama has been in India ever since China occupied Tibet. The Chinese regard him as an Indian puppet. They claim the latest unrest in Tibet was on the instigation of RAW fully supported and funded by the government of India.

CONCLUSION

India is in the process of performing ablution with the blood of Tibetan refugees which are being trained by the RAW to move them in to the altar. But who knows the flames of hate go in which direction! The region counts on 30 major insurgent outfits coupled with the numerous smaller ones. This has resulted in the longstanding, massive and extremely oppressive presence of the Indian military indulging in the large scale human rights abuses. The history of India is replete with the atrocities and brutal activities which has always created turbulence in the aura of peace. China is going to hold Tibet at any cost and the card of Tibetan refugees to be used by India will remain stuck in the fingers of RAW as in the index of its monogram.

The Amazing Qur’an

Calling the Qur’an amazing is not something done only by Muslims, who have an appreciation for the book and who are pleased with it; it has been labeled amazing by non-Muslims as well. In fact, even people who hate Islam very much have still called it amazing

One thing which surprises non-Muslims who are examining the book very closely is that the Qur’an does not appear to them to be what they expected. What they assume is that they have an old book which came fourteen centuries ago from the Arabian desert; and they expect that the book should look something like that – an old book from the desert. And then they find out that it does not resemble what they expected at all. Additionally, one of the first things that some people assume is that because it is an old book which comes from the desert, it should talk about the desert. Well the Qur’an does talk about the desert – some of its imagery describes the desert; but it also talks about the sea – what it’s like to be in a storm on the sea.

Some years ago, the story came to us in Toronto about a man who was in the merchant marine and made his living on the sea. A Muslim gave him a translation of the Qur’an to read. The merchant marine knew nothing about the history of Islam but was interested in reading the Qur’an. When he finished reading it, he brought it back to the Muslim and asked, “This Muhammad, was he a sailor?” He was impressed at how accurately the Qur’an describes a storm on a sea. When he was told, “No as a matter of fact, Muhammad lived in the desert,” that was enough for him. He embraced Islam on the spot.

He was so impressed with the Qur’an’s description because he had been in a storm on the sea, and he knew that whoever had written that description had also been in a storm on the sea. The description of “a wave, over it a wave, over it clouds” (Surah Nur, 24:40) was not what someone imagining a storm on a sea to be like would have written; rather, it was written by someone who knew what a storm on the sea was like. This is one example of how the Qur’an is not tied to certain place and time. Certainly, the scientific ideas expressed in it also do not seem to originate from the desert fourteen centuries ago.

Many centuries before the onset of Muhammad’s prophethood, there was a well-known theory of atomism advanced by the Greek philosopher, Democritus. He and the people who came after him assumed that matter consists of tiny, indestructible, indivisible particles called atoms. The Arabs too, used to deal in the same concept; in fact, the Arabic word dharrah commonly referred to the smallest particle known to man. Now, modern science has discovered that this smallest unit of matter (i.e., the atom, which has all of the same properties as its element) can be split into its component parts. This is a new idea, a development of the last century; yet; interestingly enough, this information had already been documented in the Qur’an (Surah Saba’, 34:3) which states:

“He [i.e., Allah] is aware of an atom’s weight in the heavens and on the earth and even anything smaller than that…”Undoubtedly, fourteen centuries ago that statement would have looked unusual, even to an Arab. For him, the dharrah was the smallest thing there was. Indeed, this is proof, that the Qur’an is not outdated.

Another example of what one might expect to find in an “old book” that touches upon the subject of health or medicine is outdated remedies or cures. Various historical sources state that the Prophet (s) gave some advice about health and hygiene, yet most of these pieces of advice are not contained in the Qur’an. At first glance, to the non-Muslims this appears to be a negligent omission. They cannot understand why Allah would not “include” such helpful information in the Qur’an. Some Muslims attempt to explain this absence with the following argument: “Although the Prophet’s advice was sound and applicable to the time in which he lived, Allah, in His infinite wisdom, knew that there would come later medical and scientific advances which would make the Prophet’s advice appear outdated. When later discoveries occurred, people might say that such information contradicted that which the Prophet (s) had given. Thus, since Allah would never allow any opportunity for the non-Muslims to claim that the Qur’an contradicts itself or the teachings of the Prophet (s), He only included in the Qur’an information and examples which could stand the test of time.” However, when one examines the true realities of the Qur’an in terms of its existence as a divine revelation, the entire matter is quickly brought into its proper perspective, and the error in such argumentation becomes clear and understandable.

It must be understood that the Qur’an is a divine revelation, and as such, all information in it is of divine origin. Allah revealed the Qur’an from Himself. It is the words of Allah, which existed before creation, and thus nothing can be added, subtracted or altered. In essence, the Qur’an existed and was complete before the creation of Prophet Muhammad (s), so it could not possibly contain any of the Prophet’s own words or advice. An inclusion of such information would clearly contradict the purpose for which the Qur’an exists, compromise its authority and render it inauthentic as a divine revelation.

Consequently, there was no “home remedies” in the Qur’an which one could claim to be outdated; nor does it contain any man’s view about what is beneficial to health, what food is best to eat, or what will cure this or that disease. In fact, the Qur’an only mentions one item dealing with medical treatment, and it is not in dispute by anyone. It states that in honey there is healing. And certainly, I do not think that there is anyone who will argue with that!

If one assumes that the Qur’an is the product of a man’s mind, then one would expect it to reflect some of what was going on in the mind of the man who “composed” it. In fact, certain encyclopedias and various books claim that the Qur’an was the product of hallucinations that Muhammad underwent. If these claims are true – if it indeed originated from some psychological problems in Muhammad’s mind – then evidence of this would be apparent in the Qur’an. Is there such evidence? In order to determine whether or not there is, one must first identify what things would have been going on in his mind at that time and then search for these thoughts and reflections in the Qur’an.

It is common knowledge that Muhammad (s) had a very difficult life. All of his daughters died before him except one, and he had a wife of several years who was very dear and important to him, who not only proceeded him in death but died at a very critical period of his life. As a matter of fact, she must have been quite a woman because when the first revelation came to him, he ran home to her, afraid. Certainly, even today one would have a hard time trying to find an Arab who would tell you, “I was so afraid that I ran home to my wife.” They just aren’t that way. Yet Muhammad (s) felt comfortable enough with his wife to be able to do that. That’s how influential and strong woman she was. Although these examples are only a few of the subjects that would have been on Muhammad’s mind, they are sufficient in intensity to prove my point.

The Qur’an does not mention any of these things – not the death of his children, not the death of his beloved companion and wife, not his fear of the initial revelations, which he so beautifully shared with his wife – nothing; yet these topics must have hurt him, bothered him, and caused him pain and grief during periods of his life. Indeed, if the Qur’an was a product of his psychological reflections, then these subjects, as well as others, would be prevalent or at least mentioned throughout.

A truly scientific approach to the Qur’an is possible because the Qur’an offers something that is not offered by other religious scriptures, in particular, and other religions, in general. It is what scientists demand. Today there are many people who have ideas and theories about how the universe works. These people are all over the place, but the scientific community does not even bother to listen to them. This is because within the last century the scientific community has demanded a test of falsification. They say, “If you have theory, do not bother us with it unless you bring with that theory a way for us to prove whether you are wrong or not.”

Such a test was exactly why the scientific community listened to Einstein towards the beginning of the century. He came with a new theory and said, “I believe the universe works like this; and here are three ways to prove whether I am wrong!” So the scientific community subjected his theory to the tests, and within six years it passed all three. Of course, this does not prove that he was great, but it proves that he deserved to be listened to because he said, “This is my idea; and if you want to try to prove me wrong, do this or try that.”

This is exactly what the Qur’an has – falsification tests. Some are old (in that they have already been proven true), and some still exist today. Basically it states, “If this book is not what it claims to be, then all you have to do is this or this or this to prove that it is false.” Of course, in 1400 years no one has been able to do “This or this or this,” and thus it is still considered true and authentic.

I suggest to you that the next time you get into dispute with someone about Islam and he claims that he has the truth and that you are in darkness, you leave all other arguments at first and make this suggestion. Ask him, “Is there any falsification test in your religion? Is there anything in your religion that would prove you are wrong if I could prove to you that it exists – anything?” Well, I can promise right now that people will not have anything – no test, no proof, nothing! This is because they do not carry around the idea that they should not only present what they believe but should also offer others a chance to prove they’re wrong. However, Islam does that.

A perfect example of how Islam provides man with a chance to verify it authenticity and “prove it wrong” occurs in the 4th chapter. And quiet honestly, I was very surprised when I first discovered this challenge. It states (Surah An-Nisa, 4:82):

“Do they not consider the Qur’an? Had it been from any other than Allah, they would surely have found therein much discrepancy.”This is a clear challenge to the non-Muslim. Basically, it invites him to find a mistake. As a matter of fact, the seriousness and difficulty of the challenge aside, the actual presentation of such a challenge in the first place is not even in human nature and is inconsistent with man’s personality. One doesn’t take an exam in school and after finishing the exam, write a note to the instructor at the end saying, “This exam is perfect. There are no mistakes in it. Find one if you can!” One just doesn’t do that. The teacher would not sleep until he found a mistake! And yet this is the way the Qur’an approaches people.

Another interesting attitude that exists in the Qur’an repeatedly deals with its advice to the reader. The Qur’an informs the reader about different facts and then gives the advice: “If you want to know more about this or that, or if you doubt what is said, then you should ask those who have knowledge.” This too is a surprising attitude. It is not usual to have a book that comes from someone without training in geography, botany, biology, etc., who discusses these subjects and then advises the reader to ask men of knowledge if he doubts anything. Yet in every age there have been Muslims who have followed the advice of the Qur’an and made surprising discoveries. If one looks to the works of Muslim scientists of many centuries ago, one will find them full of quotations from the Qur’an. These works state that they did research in such a place, looking for something. And they affirm that the reason they looked in such and such a place was that the Qur’an pointed them in that direction.

For example, the Qur’an mentions man’s origin and then tells the reader, “Research it!” It gives the reader a hint where to look and then states that one should find out more about it. This is the kind of thing that Muslims today largely seem to overlook – but not always, as illustrated in the following example.

A few years ago, a group of men in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia collected all of the verses in the Qur’an which discuss embryology – the growth of the human being in the womb. They said, “Here is what the Qur’an says. Is it the truth?” In essence, they took the advice of the Qur’an: “Ask the men who know.” They chose, as it happened, a non-Muslim who is a professor of embryology at the University of Toronto. His name is Keith Moore, and he is the author of textbooks on embryology – a world expert on the subject. They invited him to Riyadh and said, “This is what the Qur’an says about your subject. Is it true? What can you tell us?”

While he was in Riyadh, they gave him all the help that he needed in translation and all of the cooperation for which he asked. And he was so surprised at what he found that he changed his textbooks. In fact, in the second edition of one of his books, called Before We Are Born… in the section about the history of embryology, he included some material that was not in the first edition because of what he found in the Qur’an was ahead of its time and that those who believe in the Qur’an know what other people do not know.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Keith Moore for a television presentation, and we talked a great deal about this – it was illustrated by slides and so on. He mentioned that some of the things that the Qur’an states about the growth of the human being were not known until thirty years ago. In fact, he said that one item in particular – the Qur’an’s description of the human being as a “leech-like clot” (‘alaqah) at one stage (Surahs al-Hajj 22:5; al-Mu’minun 23:14; and Ghafir 40:67) – was new to him; but when he checked on it, he found that it was true, and so he added it to his book. He said, “I never thought of that before,” and he went to the zoology department and asked for a picture of a leech. When he found that it looked just like the human embryo, he decided to include both pictures in one of his textbooks.

Although the aforementioned example of man researching information contained in the Qur’an deals with a non-Muslim, it is still valid because he is one of those who is knowledgeable in the subject being researched. Had some layman claimed that what the Qur’an says about embryology is true, then one would not necessarily have to accept his word. However, because of the high position, respect, and esteem man gives scholars, one naturally assumes that if they research a subject and arrive at a conclusion based on that research, then the conclusion is valid.

Dr. Moore also wrote a book on clinical embryology, and when he presented this information in Toronto, it caused quite a stir throughout Canada. It was on the front pages of some of the newspapers across Canada, and some of the headlines were quite funny. For instance, one headline read: “SURPRISING THING FOUND IN ANCIENT PRAYER BOOK!” It seems obvious from this example that people do not clearly understand what it is all about. As a matter of fact, one newspaper reporter asked Professor Moore, “Don’t you think that maybe the Arabs might have known about these things – the description of the embryo, its appearance and how it changes and grows? Maybe they were not scientists, maybe they did some crude dissections on their own – carved up people and examined these things.” The professor immediately pointed out to him that he [i.e., the reporter] had missed a very important point – all of the slides of the embryo that had been shown and that had been projected in the film had come from pictures taken through a microscope. He said, “It does not matter if someone had tried to discover embryology fourteen centuries ago. They could not have seen it!”

All of the descriptions in the Qur’an of the appearance of the embryo are of the item when it is still too small to see with the eye; therefore, one needs a microscope to see it. Since such a device had only been around for little more than two hundred years, Dr. Moore taunted, “Maybe fourteen centuries ago someone secretly had a microscope and did this research, making no mistakes anywhere. Then he somehow taught Muhammad (s) and convinced him to put this information in his book. Then he destroyed his equipment and kept it a secret forever. Do you believe that? You really should not unless you bring some proof because it is such a ridiculous theory.” In fact, when he was asked, “How do you explain this information in the Qur’an?” Dr. Moore’s reply was, “It could only have been divinely revealed!”

One of Professor Moore’s colleagues, Marshall Johnson, deals extensively with geology at the University of Toronto. He became very interested in the fact that the Qur’an’s statements about embryology are accurate, and so he asked Muslims to collect everything contained in the Qur’an which deals with his speciality. Again people were very surprised at the findings. Since there are a vast number subjects discussed in the Qur’an, it would certainly require a large amount of time to exhaust each subject. It suffices for the purpose of this discussion to state that the Qur’an makes very clear and concise statements about various subjects while simultaneously advising the reader to verify the authenticity of these statements with research by scholars in those subjects. And as illustrated by the previous examples of embryology and geology, the Qur’an has clearly emerged authentic.

Undoubtedly, there is an attitude in the Qur’an which is not found anywhere else. It is interesting how when the Qur’an provides information, it often tells the reader, “You did not know this before.” Indeed, there is no scripture that exists which makes that claim. All of the other ancient writings and scriptures that people have do give a lot of information, but they always state where the information came from.

For example, when the Bible discusses ancient history, it states that this king lived here, this one fought in a certain battle, another one had so may sons, etc. Yet it always stipulates that if you want more information, then you should read the book of so and so because that is where the information came from. In contrast to this concept, the Qur’an provides the reader with information and states that this information is something new. Of course, there always exists the advice to research the information provided and verify its authenticity. It is interesting that such a concept was never challenged by non-Muslims fourteen centuries ago. Indeed, the Makkans who hated the Muslims, and time and time again they heard such revelations claiming to bring new information; yet, they never spoke up and said, “This is not new. We know where Muhammad got this information. We learned this at school.” They could never challenge its authenticity because it really was new!

In concurrence with the advice given in the Qur’an to research information (even if it is new), when ‘Umar was caliph, he chose a group of men and sent them to find the wall of Dhul-Qarnayn. Before the Qur’anic revelation, the Arabs had never heard of such a wall, but because the Qur’an described it, they were able to discover it. As a matter of fact, it is now located in what is called Durbend in the Soviet Union.

It must be stressed here that the Qur’an is accurate about many, many things, but accuracy does not necessarily mean that a book is a divine revelation. In fact, accuracy is only one of the criteria for divine revelations. For instance, the telephone book is accurate, but that does not mean that it is divinely revealed. The real problem lies in that one must establish some proof of the source the Qur’an’s information. The emphasis is in the other direction, in that the burden of proof is on the reader. One cannot simply deny the Qur’an’s authenticity without sufficient proof. If, indeed, one finds a mistake, then he has the right to disqualify it. This is exactly what the Qur’an encourages.

Once a man came up to me after a lecture I delivered in South Africa. He was very angry about what I had said, and so he claimed, “I am going to go home tonight and find a mistake in the Qur’an.” Of course, I said, “Congratulations. That is the most intelligent thing that you have said.” Certainly, this is the approach Muslims need to take with those who doubt the Qur’an’s authenticity, because the Qur’an itself offers the same challenge. And inevitably, after accepting it’s challenge and discovering that it is true, these people will come to believe it because they could not disqualify it. In essence, the Qur’an earns their respect because they themselves have had to verify its authenticity.

An essential fact that cannot be reiterated enough concerning the authenticity of the Qur’an is that one’s inability to explain a phenomenon himself does not require his acceptance of the phenomenon’s existence or another person’s explanation of it. Specifically, just because one cannot explain something does not mean that one has to accept someone else’s explanation. However, the person’s refusal of other explanations reverts the burden of proof back on himself to find a feasible answer. This general theory applies to numerous concepts in life, but fits most wonderfully with the Qur’anic challenge, for it creates a difficulty for one who says, “I do not believe it.” At the onset of refusal one immediately has an obligation to find an explanation himself if he feels others’ answers are inadequate.

In fact, in one particular Qur’anic verse which I have always seen mistranslated into English, Allah mentions a man who heard the truth explained to him. It states that he was derelict in his duty because after he heard the information, he left without checking the verity of what he had heard. In other words, one is guilty if he hears something and does not research it and check to see whether it is true. One is supposed to process all information and decide what is garbage to be thrown out and what is worthwhile information to be kept and benefitted from immediately or even at a later date.

One cannot just let it rattle around in his head. It must be put in the proper categories and approached from that point of view. For example, if the information is still speculatory, then one must discern whether it’s closer to being true or false. But if all the facts have been presented, then one must decide absolutely between these two options. And even if one is not positive about the authenticity of the information, he is still required to process all the information and make the admission that he just does not know for sure. Although this last point appears to be futile, in actuality, it is beneficial to the arrival at a positive conclusion at a later time in that it forces the person to at least recognize, research and review the facts.

This familiarity with the information will give the person “the edge” when future discoveries are made and additional information is presented. The important thing is that one deals with the facts and does not simply discard them out of empathy and disinterest.

The real certainty about the truthfulness of the Qur’an is evident in the confidence which is prevalent throughout it; and this confidence comes from a different approach – “Exhausting the alternatives.” In essence, the Qur’an states, “This book is a divine revelation; if you do not believe that, then what is it?” In other words, the reader is challenged to come up with some other explanation. Here is a book made of paper and ink. Where did it come from? It says it is a divine revelation; if it is not, then what is its source? The interesting fact is that no one has yet come up with an explanation that works. In fact, all alternatives have bee exhausted. As has been well established by non-Muslims, these alternatives basically are reduced to two mutually exclusive schools of thought, insisting on one or the other.

On one hand, there exists a large group of people who have researched the Qur’an for hundreds of years and who claim, “One thing we know for sure – that man, Muhammad (s), thought he was a prophet. He was crazy!” They are convinced that Muhammad (s) was fooled somehow. Then on the other hand, there is a group which alleges, “Because of this evidence, one thing we know for sure is that that man, Muhammad (s) was a liar!” Ironically, these two groups never seem to get together without contradicting.

In fact, many references to Islam usually claim both theories. They start out by stating that Muhammad (s) was crazy and then end by saying he was a liar. They never seem to realize that he could not have been both! For example, if one is deluded and really thinks that he is a prophet, then he does not sit up late at night planning, “How will I fool the people tomorrow so that they think I am a prophet?” He truly believes that he is a prophet, and he trusts that the answer will be given to him by revelation.

As a matter of fact, a great deal of the Qur’an came in answer to questions. Someone would ask Muhammad (s) a question, and the revelation would come with the answer to it. Certainly, if one is crazy and believes that an angel put words in his ear, then when someone asks him a question, he thinks that the angel will give him the answer. Because he is crazy, he really thinks that. He does not tell someone to wait a short while and then run to his friends and ask them, “Does anyone know the answer?” This type of behavior is characteristic of one who does not believe that he is a prophet. What the non-Muslims refuse to accept is that you cannot have it both ways. One can be deluded, or he can be a liar. He can br either one or neither one, but he certainly cannot be both! The emphasis is on the fact that they are unquestionably mutually exclusive personality traits.

The following scenario is a good example of the kind of circle that non-Muslims go around in constantly. If you ask one of them, “What is the origin of the Qur’an?” He tells you that it originated from the mind of a man who was crazy. Then you ask him, “If it came from his head, then where did he get the information contained in it? Certainly the Qur’an mentions many things with which the Arabs were not familiar.” So in order to explain the fact which you bring him, he changes his position and says, “Well, maybe he was not crazy. Maybe some foreigner brought him the information. So he lied and told people that he was a prophet.” At this point then you have to ask him, “If Muhammad was a liar, then where did he get his confidence? Why did he behave as though he really thought he was a prophet?” Finally backed into a corner, like a cat he quickly lashes out with the first response that comes to his mind. Forgetting that he has already exhausted that possibility, he claims, “Well, maybe he wasn’t a liar. He was probably crazy and really thought that he was a prophet.” And thus he begins the futile cycle again.

As has already been mentioned, there is much information contained in the Qur’an whose source cannot be attributed to anyone other than Allah. For example, who told Muhammad (s) about the wall of Dhul-Qarnayn – a place hundreds of miles to the north? Who told him about embryology? When people assemble facts such as these, if they are not willing to attribute their existence to a divine source, they automatically resort to the assumption someone brought Muhammad (s) the information and that he used it to fool the people. However, this theory can easily be disproved with one simple question: “If Muhammad (s) was a liar, where did he get his confidence? Why did he tell some people out right to their face what others could never say?” Such confidence depends completely upon being convinced that one has a true divine revelation.

Prophet Muhammad (s) had an uncle by the name of Abu Lahab. This man hated Islam to such an extent that he used to follow the Prophet around in order to discredit him. If Abu Lahab saw the Prophet (s) speaking to a stranger, he would wait until they parted and the would go to the stranger and ask him, “What did he tell you? Did he say, ‘Black’? Well, it’s white. Did he say ‘morning’? Well, it’s night.” He faithfully said the exact opposite of whatever he heard Muhammad (s) and the Muslims say. However, about ten years before Abu Lahab died, a little chapter in the Qur’an (Surah al-Lahab, 111) was revealed about him. It distinctly stated that he would go to the fire (i.e., Hell). In other words, it affirmed that he would never become a Muslim and would therefore be condemned forever. For ten years all Abu Lahab had to do was say, “I heard that it has been revealed to Muhammad that I will never change – that I will never become a Muslim and will enter the Hellfire. Well, I want to become Muslim now. How do you like that? What do you think of your divine revelation now?” But he never did that. And yet, that is exactly the kind of behavior one would have expected from him since he always sought to contradict Islam.

Ten years! And in all that time he never accepted Islam or even became sympathetic to the Islamic cause.

How could Muhammad (s) possibly have known for sure that Abu Lahab would fulfil the Qur’anic revelation if he (i.e., Muhammad) was not truly the messenger of Allah? How could he possibly have been so confident as to give someone 10 years to discredit his claim of prophethood? The only answer is that he was Allah’s messenger; for in order to put forth such a risky challenge, one has to be entirely convinced that he has a divine revelation.

Another example of the confidence which Muhammad (s) had in his own prophethood and consequently in the divine protection of himself and his message is when he left Makkah and hid in a cave with Abu Bakr (ra) during their emigration to Madeenah. The two clearly saw people coming to kill them, and Abu Bakr was afraid. Certainly, if Muhammad (s) was a liar, a forger and one who was trying to fool the people into believing that he was a prophet, one would have expected him to say in such a circumstance to his friend, “Hey, Abu Bakr, see if you can find a back way out of this cave.” Or “Squat down in that corner over there and keep quiet.” Yet, in fact, what he said to Abu Bakr clearly illustrated his confidence. He told him, “Relax! Allah is with us, and Allah will save us!” Now, if one knows that he is fooling the people, where does one get this kind of attitude? In fact, such a frame of mind is not characteristic of a liar or a forger at all.

So, as has been previously mentioned, the non-Muslims go around and around in a circle, searching for a way out – some way to explain the findings in the Qur’an without attributing them to their proper source. On one hand, they tell you on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, “The man was a liar,” and on the other hand, on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday they tell you, “He was crazy.” What they refuse to accept is that one cannot have it both ways; yet they need both theories, both excuses to explain the information in the Qur’an.

About seven years ago, I had a minister over to my home. In the particular room which we were sitting there was a Qur’an on the table, face down, and so the minister was not aware of which book it was. In the midst of a discussion, I pointed to the Qur’an and said, “I have confidence in that book.” Looking at the Qur’an but not knowing which book it was, he replied, “Well, I tell you, if that book is not the Bible, it was written by a man!” In response to his statement, I said, “Let me tell you something about what is in that book.” And in just three to four minutes, I related to him a few things contained in the Qur’an. After just those three or four minutes, he completely changed his position and declared, “You are right. A man did not write that book. The Devil wrote it!” Indeed, possessing such an attitude is very unfortunate – for many reasons. For one thing, it is a very quick and cheap excuse. It is an instant exit out of an uncomfortable situation.

As a matter of fact, there is a famous story in the Bible that mentions how one day some of the Jews were witnesses when Jesus (pbuh) raised a man from the dead. The man had been dead for four days, and when Jesus arrived, he simply said, “Get up!” and the man arose and walked away. At such a sight, some of the Jews who were watching said disbelievingly, “This is the Devil. The Devil helped him!” Now this story is rehearsed very often in churches all over the world, and people cry big tears over it, saying, “Oh, if I had been there, I would not have been as stupid as the Jews!” Yet, ironically, these people do exactly what the Jews did when in just three minutes you show them only a small part of the Qur’an and all they can say is, “Oh, the Devil did it. The devil wrote that book!” Because they are truly backed into a corner and have no other viable answer, they resort to the quickest and cheapest excuse available.

Another example of people’s use of this weak stance can be found in the Makkans’ explanation of the source of Muhammad’s message. They used to say, “The devils bring Muhammad that Qur’an!” But just as with every suggestion made, the Qur’an gives the answer. One verse (Surah Al-Qalam 68: 51-52) in particular states:

“And they say, ‘Surely he is possessed [by jinn],’ but it [i.e., the Qur’an] is not except a reminder to the worlds.”Thus it gives an argument in reply to such a theory. In fact, there are many arguments in the Qur’an in reply to the suggestion that devils brought Muhammad (s) his message. For example, in the 26th chapter Allah (SWT) clearly affirms:

“No evil ones have brought it [i.e., this revelation] down. It would neither be fitting for them, nor would they be able. Indeed they have been removed far from hearing.” (Surah ash-Shu’ara 26:210-212)And in another place (Surah an-Nahl 16:98) in the Qur’an, Allah (SWT) instructs us:

“So when you recite the Qur’an seek refuge in Allah from Shaytan, the rejected.”Now is this how Satan writes a book? He tells one, “Before you read my book, ask God to save you from me?” This is very, very tricky. Indeed, a man could write something like this, but would Satan do this? Many people clearly illustrate that they cannot come to one conclusion on this subject. On one hand, they claim that Satan would not do such a thing and that even if he could, God would not allow him to; yet, on the other hand, they also believe that Satan is only that much less than God. In essence they allege that the Devil can probably do whatever God can do. And as a result, when they look at the Qur’an, even as surprised as they are as to how amazing it is, they still insist, “The Devil did this!”

Thanks be to Allah (SWT), Muslims do not have that attitude. Although Satan may have some abilities, they are a long way separated from the abilities of Allah. And no Muslim is a Muslim unless he believes that. It is common knowledge even among non-Muslims that the Devil can easily make mistakes, and it would be expected that he would contradict himself if and when he wrote a book. For indeed, the Qur’an states (Surah an-Nisa 4:82):

“Do they not consider the Qur’an? Had it been from other than Allah, they would surely have found therein much discrepancy.”Back to Section Index

In conjunction with the excuses that non-Muslims advance in futile attempts to justify unexplainable verses in the Qur’an, there is another attack often rendered which seems to be a combination of the theories that Muhammad (s) was crazy and a liar. Basically, these people propose that Muhammad was insane, and as a result of his delusion, he lied to and misled people. There is a name for this in psychology. It is referred to as mythomania. It means simply that one tells lies and then believes them. This is what the non-Muslims say Muhammad (s) suffered from. But the only problem with this proposal is that one suffering from mythomania absolutely cannot deal with any facts, and yet the whole Qur’an is based entirely upon facts. Everything contained in it can be researched and established as true. Since facts are such a problem for a mythomaniac, when a psychologist tries to treat one suffering from that condition, he continually confronts him with facts.

For example, if one is mentally ill and claims, “I am the king of England,” a psychologist does not say to him “No you aren’t. You are crazy!” He just does not do that. Rather, he confronts him with facts and says, “O.K., you say you are the king of England. So tell me where the queen is today. And where is your prime minister? And where are your guards?” Now, when the man has trouble trying to deal with these questions, he tries to make excuses, saying “Uh… the queen… she has gone to her mother’s. Uh… the prime minister… well he died.” And eventually he is cured because he cannot deal with the facts. If the psychologist continues confronting him with enough facts, finally he faces the reality and says, “I guess I am not the king of England.”

The Qur’an approaches everyone who reads it in very much the same way a psychologist treats his mythomania patient. There is a verse in the Qur’an (Surah Yunus 10:57) which states:

“O mankind, there has come to you an admonition [i.e., the Qur’an] from your Lord and a healing for what is in the hearts – and guidance and mercy for the believers.”At first glance, this statement appears vague, but the meaning of this verse is clear when one views it in light of the aforementioned example. Basically, one is healed of his delusions by reading the Qur’an. In essence, it is therapy. It literally cures deluded people by confronting them with facts. A prevalent attitude throughout the Qur’an is one which says, “O mankind, you say such and such about this; but what about such and such? How can you say this when you know that?” And so forth. It forces one to consider what is relevant and what matters while simultaneously healing one of the delusions that facts presented to mankind by Allah can easily be explained away with flimsy theories and excuses.

It is this very sort of thing – confronting people with facts – that had captured the attention of many non-Muslims. In fact, there exists a very interesting reference concerning this subject in the New Catholic Encyclopedia. In an article under the subject of the Qur’an, the Catholic Church states:

“Over the centuries, many theories have been offered as to the origin of the Qur’an… Today no sensible man accepts any of these theories!!”

Now here is the age-old Catholic Church, which has been around for so many centuries, denying these futile attempts to explain away the Qur’an.

Indeed, the Qur’an is a problem for the Catholic Church. It states that it is revelation, so they study it. Certainly, they would love to find proof that it is not, but they cannot. They cannot find a viable explanation. But at least they are honest in their research and do not accept the first unsubstantiated interpretation which comes along. The Church states that in fourteen centuries it has not yet been presented a sensible explanation. At least it admits that the Qur’an is not an easy subject to dismiss. Certainly, other people are much less honest. They quickly say, “Oh, the Qur’an came from here. The Qur’an came from there.” And they do not even examine the credibility of what they are stating most of the time.

Of course, such a statement by the Catholic Church leaves the everyday Christian in some difficulty. It just may be that he has his own ideas as to the origin of the Qur’an, but as a single member of the Church, he cannot really act upon his own theory. Such an action would be contrary to the obedience, allegiance and loyalty which the Church demands. By virtue of his membership, he must accept what the Catholic Church declares without question and establish its teachings as part of his everyday routine. So, in essence, if the Catholic Church as a whole is saying, “Do not listen to these unconfirmed reports about the Qur’an,” then what can be said about the Islamic point of view? If even non-Muslims are admitting that there is something to the Qur’an – something that has to be acknowledged – then why are people so stubborn and defensive and hostile when Muslims advance the very same theory? This is certainly something for those with a mind to contemplate – something to ponder for those of understanding!

Recently, the leading intellectual in the Catholic Church – a man by the name of Hans – studied the Qur’an and gave his opinion of what he had read. This man has been around for some time, and he is highly respected in the Catholic Church, and after careful scrutiny, he reported his findings, concluding, “God has spoken to man through the man, Muhammad.” Again this is a conclusion arrived at by a non-Muslim source – the very leading intellectual of the Catholic Church himself!

I do not think that the Pope agrees with him, but nonetheless, the opinion of such a noted, reputed public figure must carry some weight in defense of the Muslim position. He must be applauded for facing the reality that the Qur’an is not something which can be easily pushed aside and that, in fact God is the source of these words.

As is evident from the aforementioned information, all of the possibilities have been exhausted, so the chance of finding another possibility of dismissing the Qur’an is nonexistent.

If the book is not a revelation, then it is a deception; and if it is a deception, one must ask, “What is its origin? And where does it deceive us?” Indeed, the true answers to these questions shed light on the Qur’an’s authenticity and silence the bitter unsubstantiated claims of the unbelievers.

Certainly, if people are going to insist that the Qur’an is a deception, then they must bring forth evidence to support such a claim. The burden of proof is on them, not us! One is never supposed to advance a theory without sufficient corroborating facts; so I say to them, “Show me one deception! Show me where the Qur’an deceives me! Show me, otherwise don’t say that it is a deception!”

An interesting characteristic of the Qur’an is how it deals with surprising phenomena which relate not only to the past but to modern times as well. In essence, the Qur’an is not and old problem. It is still a problem even today – a problem to the non-Muslims that is. For everyday, every week, every year brings more and more evidence that the Qur’an is a force to be contended with – that its authenticity is no longer to be challenged! For example, one verse in the Qur’an (Surah al-Anbiya 21:30) reads:

“Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together, then We clove them asunder, and made from water every living thing? Will they not then believe?”Ironically, this very information is exactly what they awarded the 1973 Noble Prize for – to a couple of unbelievers.

The Qur’an reveals the origin of the universe – how it began from one piece – and mankind continues to verify this revelation, even up to now. Additionally, the fact that all life originated from water would not have been an easy thing to convince people of fourteen centuries ago. Indeed, if 1400 years ago you had stood in the desert and told someone, “All of this, you see (pointing to yourself), is made up of mostly water,” no one would have believed you. Proof of that was not available until the invention of the microscope. They had to wait to find out that cytoplasm, the basic substance of the cell, is made-up of 80% water. Nonetheless, the evidence did come, and once again the Qur’an stood the test of time.

In reference to the falsification tests mentioned earlier, it is interesting to note that they, too, relate to both the past and the present. Some of them were used as illustrations of Allah’s omnipotence and knowledge, while others continue to stand as challenges to the present day. An example of the former is the statement made in the Qur’an about Abu Lahab. It clearly illustrates that Allah, the Knower of the Unseen, knew that Abu Lahab would never change his ways and accept Islam. Thus Allah dictated that he would be condemned to the Hellfire forever. Such a chapter was both an illustration of Allah’s divine wisdom and a warning to those who were like Abu Lahab.

An interesting example of the latter type of falsification tests contained in the Qur’an is the verse which mentions the relationship between the Muslims and the Jews. The verse is careful not to narrow its scope to the relationship between individual members of each religion, but rather, it summarizes the relationship between the two groups of people as a whole. In essence, the Qur’an states that the Christians will always treat the Muslims better than the Jews will treat the Muslims. Indeed, the full impact of such a statement can only be felt after careful consideration of the real meaning of such a verse. It is true that many Christians and many Jews have become Muslims, but as a whole, the Jewish community is to be viewed as an avid enemy of Islam. Additionally, very few people realize what such an open declaration in the Qur’an invites. In essence, it is an easy chance for the Jews to prove that the Qur’an is false – that it is not a divine revelation. All they have to do is organize themselves, treat the Muslims nicely for a few years and then say, “Now what does your holy book say about who are your best friends in the world – the Jews or the Christians? Look what we Jews have done for you!” That is all they have to do to disprove the Qur’an’s authenticity, yet they have not done it in 1400 years. But, as always, the offer still stands open!

All of the examples so far given concerning the various angles from which one can approach the Qur’an have undoubtedly been subjective in nature; however, there does exist another angle, among others, which is objective and whose basis is mathematical.

It is surprising how authentic the Qur’an becomes when one assembles what might be referred to as a list of good guesses. Mathematically, it can be explained using guessing and prediction examples. For instance, if a person has two choices (i.e., one is right, and one is wrong), and he closes his eyes and makes a choice, then half of the time (i.e., one time out of two) he will be right. Basically, he has a one in two chance, for he could pick the wrong choice, or he could pick the right choice.

Now if the same person has two situations like that (i.e., he could be right or wrong about situation number one, and he could be right or wrong about situation number two), and he closes his eyes and guesses, then he will only be right one-fourth of the time (i.e., one time out of four). He now has a one in four chance because now there are three ways for him to be wrong and only one way for him to be right. In simple terms, he could make the wrong choice in situation number one and then make the wrong choice in situation number two; or he could make the wrong choice in situation number one and then make the right choice in situation number two; or he could make the right choice in situation number one and then make the wrong choice in situation number two; or he could make the right choice in situation number one and then make the right choice in situation number two.

Of course, the (only instance in which he could be totally right is the last scenario where he could guess correctly in both situations. The odds of his guessing completely correctly have become greater because the number of situations for him to guess in have increased; and the mathematical equation representing such a scenario is ½ x ½ (i.e., one time out of two for the first situation multiplied by one time out of two for the second situation).

Continuing on with the example, if the same person now has three situations in which to make blind guesses, then he will only be right one-eighth of the time (i.e., one time out of eight or ½ x ½ x ½ ). Again, the odds of choosing the correct choice in all three situations have decreased his chances of being completely correct to only one time in eight. It must be understood that as the number of situations increase, the chances of being right decrease, for the two phenomena are inversely proportional.

Now applying this example to the situations in the Qur’an, if one draws up a list of all of the subjects about which the Qur’an has made correct statements, it becomes very clear that it is highly unlikely that they were all just correct blind guesses. Indeed, the subjects discussed in the Qur’an are numerous, and thus the odds of someone just making lucky guesses about all of them become practically nil. If there are a million ways for the Qur’an to be wrong, yet each time it is right, then it is unlikely that someone was guessing.

The following three examples of subjects about which the Qur’an has made correct statements collectively illustrate how the Qur’an continues to beat the odds.

In the 16th chapter (Surah an-Nahl 16:68-69) the Qur’an mentions that the female bee leaves its home to gather food. Now, a person might guess on that, saying, “The bee that you see flying around – it could be male, or it could be female. I think I will guess female.” Certainly, he has a one in two chance of being right. So it happens that the Qur’an is right. But it also happens that that was not what most people believed at the time when the Qur’an was revealed. Can you tell the difference between a male and a female bee? Well, it takes a specialist to do that, but it has been discovered that the male bee never leaves his home to gather food. However, in Shakespeare’s play, Henry the Fourth, some of the characters discuss bees and mention that the bees are soldiers and have a king. That is what people thought in Shakespeare’s time – that the bees that one sees flying around are male bees and that they go home and answer to a king. However, that is not true at all. The fact is that they are females, and they answer to a queen. Yet it took modern scientific investigations in the last 300 years to discover that this is the case.

So, back to the list of good guesses, concerning the topic of bees, the Qur’an had a 50/50 chance of being right, and the odds were one in two.

In addition to the subject of bees, the Qur’an also discusses the sun and the manner in which it travels through space. Again, a person can guess on that subject. When the sun moves through space, there are two options: it can travel just as a stone would travel if one threw it, or it can move of its own accord. The Qur’an states the latter – that it moves as a result of its own motion (Surah al-Anbiya 21:33). To do such, the Qur’an uses a form of the word sabaha to describe the sun’s movement through space. In order to properly provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the implications of this Arabic verb, the following example is given.

If a man is in water and the verb sabaha is applied in reference to his movement, it can be understood that he is swimming, moving of his own accord and not as a result of a direct force applied to him. Thus when this verb is used in reference to the sun’s movement through space, it in no way implies that the sun is flying uncontrollably through space as a result of being hurled or the like. It simply means that the sun is turning and rotating as it travels. Now, this is what the Qur’an affirms, but was it an easy thing to discover? Can any common man tell that the sun is turning? Only in modern times was the equipment made available to project the image of the sun onto a tabletop so that one could look at it without being blinded. And through this process it was discovered that not only are there spots on the sun but that these spots move once every 25 days. This movement is referred to as the rotation of the sun around its axis and conclusively proves that, as the Qur’an stated 1400 years ago, the sun does, indeed, turn as it travels through space.

And returning once again to the subject of good guesses, the odds of guessing correctly about both subjects – the sex of bees and the movement of the sun – are one in four!

Seeing as back fourteen centuries ago people probably did not understand much about time zones, the Qur’an’s statements about this subject are considerably surprising. The concept that one family is having breakfast as the sun comes up while another family is enjoying the brisk night air is truly something to be marveled at, even in modern time. Indeed, fourteen centuries ago, a man could not travel more than thirty miles in one day, and thus it took him literally months to travel from India to Morocco, for example. And probably, when he was having supper in Morocco, he thought to himself, “Back home in India they are having supper right now.” This is because he did not realize that, in the process of traveling, he moved across a time zone. Yet, because it is the words of Allah, the All-Knowing, the Qur’an recognizes and acknowledges such a phenomenon.

In an interesting verse it states that when history comes to an end and the Day of Judgement arrives, it will all occur in an instant; and this very instant will catch some people in the daytime and some people at night. This clearly illustrates Allah’s divine wisdom and His previous knowledge of the existence of time zones, even though such a discovery was non-existent back fourteen centuries ago. Certainly, this phenomenon is not something which is obvious to one’s eyes or a result of one’s experience, and this fact, in itself, suffices as proof of the Qur’an’s authenticity.

Returning one final time to the subject of good guesses for the purpose of the present example, the odds that someone guessed correctly about all three of the aforementioned subjects – the sex of bees, the movement of the sun and the existence of time zones – are one in eight!

Certainly, one could continue on and on with this example, drawing up longer and longer list of good guesses; and of course, the odds would become higher and higher with each increase of subjects about which one could guess. But what no one can deny is the following: the odds that Muhammad (s), an illiterate, guessed correctly about thousands and thousands of subjects, never once making a mistake, are so high that any theory of his authorship of the Qur’an must be completely dismissed – even by the most hostile enemies of Islam!

Indeed, the Qur’an expects this kind of challenge. Undoubtedly, if one said to someone upon entering a foreign land, “I know your father. I have met him,” probably the man from that land would doubt the newcomer’s word, saying, “You have just come here. How could you know my father?” As a result, he would question him, “Tell me, is my father tall, short, dark, fair? What is he like?” Of course, if the visitor continued answering all of the questions correctly, the skeptic would have no choice but to say, “I guess you do know my father. I don’t know how you know him, but I guess you do!”

The situation is the same with the Qur’an. It states that it originates from the One who created everything. So everyone has the right to say, “Convince me! If the author of this book really originated life and everything in the heavens and on the earth, then He should know about this, about that, and so on.” And inevitably, after researching the Qur’an, everyone will discover the same truths. Additionally, we all know something for sure: we do not all have to be experts to verify what the Qur’an affirms. One’s iman (faith) grows as one continues to check and confirm the truths contained in the Qur’an. And one is supposed to do so all of his life.

An engineer at the University of Toronto who was interested in psychology and who had read something on it, conducted research and wrote a thesis on Efficiency of Group Discussions. The purpose of his research was to find out how much people accomplish when they get together to talk in groups of two, three, ten, etc. The graph of his findings goes up and down at places, but it reaches the highest point at the variable of two. The findings: people accomplish most when they talk in groups of two. Of course, this discovery was entirely beyond his expectations, but it is very old advice given in the Qur’an (Surah Saba 34:46): “Say, ‘I exhort you to one thing – that you stand for Allah, [assessing the truth] by twos and singly, and then reflect…'”

Additionally, the 89th chapter of the Qur’an (Surah al-Fajr 89:7) mentions a certain city by the name of ‘Iram (a city of pillars), which was not known in ancient history and which was non-existent as far as historians were concerned. However, the December 1978 edition of National Geographic introduced interesting information which mentioned that in 1973, the city of Elba was excavated in Syria. The city was discovered to be 43 centuries old, but that is not the most amazing part. Researchers found in the library of Elba a record of all of the cities with which Elba had done business. Believe it or not, there on the list was the name of the city of ‘Iram. The people of Elba had done business with the people of ‘Iram!

In conclusion I ask you to consider with care the following (Surah 29:50-51): “And they say, ‘Why are not signs sent down to him from his Lord?’ Say, ‘Indeed, the signs are with Allah, and I am but a clear warner.’ But it is sufficient for them that We have sent down to you the Book [i.e., Qur’an] which is rehearsed to them? Verily, in that is mercy and a reminder to people who believe.”

Sinister designs on Sri Lanka

Much has been said about the terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore and the basic details are common knowledge. The “who” and “why” are not clear yet, but what is generally accepted is that there were serious security lapses on the part of Pakistan, especially in terms of security guarantees and undertaking given by the PCB prior to the tour.

Pakistan probably realises that such lapses only gives ammunition to its archrival India and of course the USA in whose interest (more than anyone else’s) it is to portray that country as being blown apart by terrorism.

Interestingly, and indeed commendably, neither Pakistan nor Sri Lanka engaged in any immature blame game like what happened in the aftermath of the 11/26 attack on Mumbai. Neither the Sri Lankan people nor the Sri Lankan media made a Bollywood spectacle of the Lahore attack. There was no mass hysteria. That’s a kind of political maturity that the Indian masses and mass media are yet to attain, one is forced to observe. Such a course of action would have only serves the interests of the terrorists. On the contrary, Sri Lanka, very responsibly condemned those in the world media baying for Pakistan’s blood in its hour of greatest need, even as carefully ‘placed’ video camera footage and stories planted in the press in foreign capitals sought to play into the hands of the terrorists.

To put ‘Mumbai’, ‘Lahore’ and of course, the countless such terrorist attacks that Sri Lanka has suffered at the hands of the LTTE in it’s proper context, an analysis of the Lahore attack in depth in a geo political sense is essential.

It is pertinent to note that 60-70 percent of the Afghan parliament is occupied by former mujahedin, ex-communists, drug-barons, and warlords who individually and collectively do their utmost to prevent the Central Government’s writ being established across the country. There are serious conflicts between Pashtuns and Non-Pashtuns, especially the Tajik population of the country. The Afghan National Army (ANA) is seriously short of manpower to the tune of an 80,000 troop inadequacy. The Afghan dilemma contains, as such, the reality of Indian ‘advisors’ and intelligence officers littered along the Pakistani border and ‘consulates’ functioning as intelligence gathering networks along the 2,560 km long Durand line border. The Indians and Americans have essentially ensured that Hamid Karzai is hapless with presidential elections declared in August (term expires in May). Development in Afghanistan is a non-starter.

Yet, instead of finding a viable exit strategy like in Iraq, the new American administration announced the induction of 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan even as it made noises about not winning the war in Afghanistan and talking of initiating talks with the Afghanistani Taliban.

This is how the West in general and the US in particular dismembers countries in the guise on waging its war on terror. India has lifted a page from that pernicious handbook, it seems.

To return to Pakistan, the Obama administration has announced an intention to increase the intensity of the drone bombings inside Pakistan and in the same breath, advocates talks with the Afghanistani Taliban.

The Zardari Government is certainly not doing itself any favours either. Depriving Nawaz Sharif of contesting elections or holding public office and sacking his popular brother Sheka Sharif (which probably led to the costly security lapses at Lahore), not restoring the independence of the judiciary as promised during the election campaign and remaining mum on the exposure by US Senator Dianne Feinstein that the US drones that bomb NWFP took off from Pakistani bases has strengthened the perception that the regime is made up of a bunch of pro-American agents. Given history, one cannot be blamed for wondering if the Pakistani military military is waiting for the usually nod of approval from the US embassy for yet another coup to restore the image of stability in Pakistan.

The Pakistani Government signed a peace accord in the Swat Valley region for the return of Shaira law. This lead to a hail of criticism in the western media, Is it not another face saving Bajaur type truce that the Americans so desire in Afghanistan to pull out its troops one needs to ask?

Elsewhere the Pakistani government is following the military option and it is useful to note that attacks between Pakistani security forces and terrorists have intensified in Nawagai and Mohamand regions since the 3/3 attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers.

Let’s remember that China will remain determined to be a part of the regional and of course major part of the global equation. The Gawadar Port (China’s biggest overseas construction undertaking) would give China direct access to the Indian Ocean. This is unacceptable to both the Indians and the Americans (India, because of its aspiration to be an up-and-coming blue water navy and dominate the region and the US, due to the given concerns about China’s close accessibility to the strategic Straits of Hormuz). “Terrorism in Pakistan” therefore is a subject that has to be included in such considerations.

Perhaps this is the reason why Basit-ul-Ullah Mahsud who was held in Guantanamo for 2-3 years has been attacking targets detrimental to Pakistan’s interest ever since he was released and subsequently disappeared in Pakistan. His first major action was to kidnap some Chinese engineers attached to the Gawadar project.

It is also pertinent to remember that a nuclear armed Iran and Pakistan pose a common strategic military threat to not only US/western interests in the region but also to Israel and India.

Slieg Harrison of the Centre of International Policy in Washington predicted the breakup of Pakistan into three sovereign states all along ethnic lines: Pashtunistan (comprising Pashtuns of North Western Frontier Provinces, NWFP, and Afghanistan as one country), Free Baluchistan (a federation comprising the Sindh and Baluchistan provincial regions) and Pakistan (comprising the nuclear armed Punjabi rump state), with Baluchistan being the high priority target for both Indians and Americans due to General Musharraf’s efforts to marginalise mischief making tribal leaders with the help of China.

General Aslam Beg, Pakistan’s former Army chief in an article about the “Strategic Partnership Deal” says that it led to the creation of a joint espionage network comprising CIA, Mossad, MI6 and RAW that is now engaged in destabilising Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia and other Central Asian States such as Tajikistan.

As part of this plan in the NWFP the main terrorist group called Pakistani Taliban is fighting a proxy war in the tribal belt. By engaging Pakistani Taliban and terrorist insurgents in Baluchistan, the Pakistani armed forces are stretched to its maximum limit and unable to concentrate on the Indo Pakistani border or on Kashmir terrorists.

As Rahman Malik (special advisor to Zadari) clearly pointed out that theydo not rule out the possibility of a foreign hand in the cricketer’s incident.

Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Research on Globalisation in his article “The Destabilisation of Pakistan” says (unashamedly) “Washington’s foreign policy course is to actively promote the political fragmentation and balkanisation of Pakistan as a nation”. He goes on to say “The course consists of fomenting social, ethnic and factional divisions and political fragmentation, including the territorial break up of Pakistan”. Familiar? Yes, it is not too different to the American/Indian policy preferences with respect to Sri Lanka and quite similar to the ‘proposal’ to devolve power in areas freed from terrorism.

If a hostage take over was the terrorist objective then wouldn’t one or two dead bodies of cricketers’ executed by them have had the desired impact on Colombo and have forced a ceasefire to pacify an outraged Sri Lankan population?

According to reports in newspapers like the Hindu and Times of India, India had told the Sri Lankans not to go to Pakistan, but Sri Lankans outrageously defied that Indian “order”. Perhaps Sri Lanka needed to be taught a lesson in obedience. Indian rulers were not too pleased at all. They expressed their displeasure to Colombo in no uncertain terms. The effectiveness of their boycott of Pakistan was being neutralised by Sri Lanka. The Times of India was bold enough to say “India is not happy with Sri Lanka’s cricket tour to Pakistan”. The Sunday Times opined that Ranatunge’s decision to tour Pakistan “had irked the Indian authorities” and reported that the matter had been discussed at the highest levels in Colombo. To appease the Indians, Ranatunge and his administration had to be fired and the Sports Minister Gamini Lokuge said “the tour had become a diplomatic issue”.

It is always pertinent to examine whether the diplomatic closeness between Pakistan and Sri Lanka and it’s perceived strategic threat on the interests of other nations could have been the main factor for the targeting of the cricket team.

RAW has been structured and designed to primarily serve the imperial and expansionist needs and more than the national security needs of India. It has a Special Ops Division in all SAARC countries with a large network of local agents specialising in assassinations, sabotage and raids and paramilitary style operations. Propaganda and deception are integral elements of the overall RAW modus operandi. Covert operations and fuelling clandestine warfare in neighbouring countries is another area of RAW specialisation.

It must be noted at this point that the Daily Mirror newspaper in Sri Lanka reported how the RAW is supporting cross border terrorist groups such as the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) to separate the largest province from Pakistan.

The Indian media was quick to point a finger at Lashkar-e-Taibar (LeT) and its front organisations such as the Lashar-e-Jhanvi (LeJ) and attempted to establish a close link between these groups and the LTTE. However the LeT spokesman Abdullah Ghaznavi was quick to deny involvement in the attack. He rejected media reports of their involvement in the attack and said “The attack on Sri Lanka’s team was an attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty and Kashimiris could never think of that”. He went on to accuse the Indian agencies of trying to defame Pakistan and to bring instability to the region. Imran Khan speaking to Times/UK opined that the Lahore attack was not perpetrated by ideological terrorists. He argued that there was a pattern in such attacks and that in his view a “foreign element” was almost certainly involved.

Indian intelligence sources have also gone to great lengths to establish a connection between the Marakat-ul Mujahideen (MuM) and the LTTE. They have said that the former leader of the LTTE “Mahattaya” was killed by the LTTE due to his connections with the RAW (result of RAW efforts to indoctrinate Sri Lankan Tamil prisoners, which backfired). Some analysts like Ram Madhav have even argued LTTE was equipping Indian terror outfits like the Maoists and the United Liberation Front (ULF) of Assam.

It is also a well known fact that RAW operations in both Pakistan and Sri Lanka are mostly about Human Intelligence (HUMINT) unlike those of the CIA, SIS and MI6, whose Intelligence gathering forte are in areas of Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT), Imagery Intelligence (IMINT), Sophisticated Signal Intelligence (SIGINT), Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) etc. HUMINT is a very difficult and sometimes costly affair for any intelligence agency such as RAW and they often resort to financing outside of the normally allotted governmental finances. With a total budget of appx. Rs. 2,500 crore it is well known that RAW has had to resort to drug smuggling from India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan using Sri Lanka as a transit point to finance certain special operations. It had close connections not only with the LTTE but Pakistani terror groups from the times of the Mujahedeen/Jihadist operations against the Soviet Union.

It is also worth pointing out that 70 % of the funding requirements of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan come from the opium trade.

One must also look at cases like Massood Az Har of Jaish-E- Muhammad who was being held without charges by India and was subsequently released following a deal done in a hijacking drama. He has since been targeting subjects detrimental to Pakistani interests. It would be interesting to see where the strings that control Muhammad Aqil who is one of the prime suspects on the attack of the cricketers will lead to.

On the other hand some analysts had concluded that the attack on the cricketers may have been precipitated due to the fact that Sri Lanka now represents a success story in ” Miitarily defeating terrorism”. They also say this was a danger to the Taliban’s ambition of acquiring conventional military capability in the Fata region.

There is one contradiction in all this however, after yesterday’s bomb attack in Matara, RAW agents such as Hariharan says “with the LTTE, there is no love lost for Muslims”. How true they chased out and ethnically cleansed the entire Northern Province of Muslims numbering more than 100,000 within 48 hours. Some of those subsequently worked with the Sri Lanka Army intelligence.

These all remain in the realm of ‘machinations’ at this point and nothing conclusive can be said. It is heartening that in spite of all the pressure Pakistan has quite correctly maintained a tight lid until the investigations are complete. One can only hope for all concerned that these investigations are swiftly concluded and the culprits are punished for their crimes.

Meanwhile Chidambaram has been making some “queer and ludicrous” statements before and after the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team: “the ISI were training Tamil armed group in the North and East of Sri Lanka and sending them as refugees to Tamil Nadu to ferment terrorism”. “The ISI can infiltrate India through Sri Lanka” he said, adding that “cricket is safe in India, but security forces are required to make it more secure”.

The RAW analyst Raman in his attempts to whitewash his organisation’s involvement in cross border terrorism made the most hilarious statements of all in his assertions “That ISI had links with the LTTE since 1990” so it was all the ISI and not the RAW ?

Whoever was responsible for attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team succeeded in achieving a multitude of objectives, some of which are given below:

– Pakistan is a country in anarchy; Pakistan should not only be isolated in sports but also no foreigners should visit the country.

– The weakening economy will be further destroyed with no foreign investments or lending forthcoming, creating both political and economic instability.

– This will increase Pakistan’s foreign debt significantly.

– It was clearly a signal to Sri Lanka not to get too cosy with Pakistan after the end of it’s conflict.

All this points to a singular design on Sri Lanka: push the island nation into a ceasefire situation that benefits no one but India.

Perhaps India’s has it’s own reasons to demand that Sri Lanka gets directly involved in the investigation into the attack.

India has not exactly been Sri Lanka’s friend. Pre-1987, India actively trained terrorists. Later, India played only lip service to Sri Lanka by giving the usual training, some naval intelligence information and obsolete 2D radar (to block the supply of 3D radar being purchased from China which proved to be a costly error in the early days of the LTTE air raids).

They have once again violated Sri Lankan sovereignty and independence by landing Indian forces (or some say those RAW agents with “stethoscopes round their necks” or as “betel-chewing nurses in white uniforms”) to take control of Pulmoddai under the false guise of setting up a field hospital to treat the injured civilians and who knows, perhaps even terrorists. We note, with grave concern that these so called ‘doctors’, have effectively taken control of Sri Lanka’s most valuable mineral resources. Already the South Block defence and external affairs officials are working on several plans to increase the number of these so-called “military medical teams”. It is said India hopes to force Sri Lanka to expand these unwelcome military teams to cover other areas such as road building, de-mining etc. India seems to have put a foot into a situation that will see a number of other foreign forces landing on Sri Lankan soil on India’s back on the pretext of ‘assisting Sri Lanka’.

Are we seeing the first moves in a concerted “American-Indian” led invasion of Sri Lanka on the pretext of ‘evacuating’ that magic number of “quarter of a million civilians” that the LTTE and it’s propagandists claim are trapped in the Wanni. The many visits by officials of PACOM (US Pacific Command) could not have been just to sample arrack and papadam, one notes.

Robert Kaplan writing to the latest issue of the American Foreign Affairs journal says “we will have to do so not as in Afghanistan and Iraq as a land-based, in-your- face meddler …but as a sea based balancer lurking just over the horizon”. Sea power has always been less threatening than land power; as the cliché goes navies make port visits and armies invade.

So once again just like in 1987 the Indian army and US Navy are poised to invade Sri Lanka and save the day for the terrorists. We note, again with concern and a keen consciousness of history, that several other countries such as the UK, France, Switzerland, have also “offered assistance” to this invasion force.

They are also encircling the naval dockyard from the North and the South (where you find Indian military personal operating from NIOC facilities in Trincomalee) and are now able to have a stranglehold grip on the Trincomalee port. This was the identical strategy the RAW must have advocated to the LTTE when they too encircled the naval dockyard from the South and brought their artillery guns within range of the base and the fleet, targeting thus the lifeline of all economic activity of the North and the East. This is probably what Clinton and Menon discussed for 45 minutes on Monday. Is this what they call “US-India counter-terrorism collaboration”?

The conventional Indian body politic has begun threatening Sri Lanka by crying for Sri Lanka’s blood in mass hysteria just like they did for Pakistani blood after the Mumbai attack.

India has offered the Northern and Eastern provinces massive development assistance. It is also useful to take note of the the Indian demand to develop the Northern and Eastern Provinces and the Indian High Commissioner’s attempts to bypass the Central Government and assist the Chief Minister of the Eastern Provincial Council.

According to Pillyan it was not the LTTE that shot his private secretary, who happened to be awell known RAW operative. Pilliyan has had meetings with the Indian High Commissioner Alok Prasad and the officials of the PACOM. It is quite possible that he is the Sun-God-in-Waiting that India is nurturing for the next 3 decades!

Indian bids to develop and control the KKS cement plant, control Sri Lanka’s energy though NIOC and oil exploration of the Gulf of Mannar and control of Sri Lanka’s power sectors by the marine cable power line and the two coal power plants in Trincomalee have to be viewed as the regional version of the Trojan Horse.

India will no doubt do it’s all to fleece and wheedle out from the people of the north and the east if not the whole of Sri Lanka dry and of all its resources before creating another terrorist monster like the LTTE to deflect the focus of its Tamil Nadu parasitic separatist militancy in order to maintain its own union. India will never give anything of substance back to Sri Lanka without an ulterior motive that benefits her.

Like that what has happened in Pakistan, the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims of Sri Lanka will once again end up killing each other for another 100 years in order to keep “Mother India” intact. When all the election rhetoric is over, the flames of separatism in South India will have to be doused, what better way to do so than with the time tested method of deflecting it towards Sri Lanka in the form of a LTTE-2.

Sri Lanka must never again allow the ugly head of another RAW sponsored terrorism to raise its head. It has cost Sri Lanka enough. She has bled for far too long. The LTTE surrendees or the common man in the north or the east today have no interest in the devolution of power to break up Sri Lanka like in the case of Pakistan or anything else that the India/USA/NGO-Mafia, the LTTE apologists or those “Colombians” pandering to foreigners are trying push down the throats of Sri Lanka.

It is these very same forces that had not too long ago convinced the Sri Lankan population that LTTE terrorists were an invincible military force which could never be defeated, that India would never allow it to be defeated, and therefore this country was asked to negotiate with these terrorists and separate the country on mono ethnic lines to appease the terrorists.

In a post conflict Sri Lanka her citizenry should always remember who helped her to defeat the most powerful terrorist group in the world, and on the other hand which were the forces that bullied her to act against her self-interest. Who was the friend in need who shipped arms to the Sri Lankan Armed Forces on a mere phone call, or who helped her armed forces in their most critical hours? Who, on the other hand, refused to provide necessary weapons citing various excuses but always tried to exercise control both strategically and economically for their own selfish reasons.

Apart from extending “real” help to Sri Lanka to free her land from the Indian-Made, West-Supported LTTE terrorism” China also remains the 2nd biggest aid provider in real terms. Countries like China and Japan have offered help without strings attached, unlike the western donors (USA, UK, EU, Norway). The USA, EU, and India, who give a pittance to Sri Lanka and never fail to bully, intimidate, and pressurise Sri Lanka on various issues to subscribe to their agendas. The hostility of US Ambassadors (Schafter, Lumstead and now Blake) towards the Sri Lankan state constitute a good case in point. Countries like China, Japan, and Russia help Sri Lanka when the west tries getting Sri Lanka on to the agenda of the UN Security Council.

Taking all this into consideration, perhaps the time has come for countries like Pakistan and Iran too, to learn a lesson or two from the bitter Sri Lankan experiences with the USA/EU and their India to save their independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.

The new world order is changing rapidly, Obama or no Obama,

The recent developments in India and particularly in Tamil Nadu should hold valuable lessons for Sri Lanka. It clearly shows that in a post conflict Sri Lanka, it is essential to build very fruitful mutually beneficial stronger bilateral relationships with countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan. These relationships should go beyond the traditional areas of trade, cultural, and economic, cooperation to extend to cooperation in areas such as military, power generation, communications and other strategic areas as well. Strong bilateral “all weather” relationships with these countries is an essential prerequisite for the peaceful survival, stability, and growth of Sri Lanka.

It is obvious that Sri Lanka has little choice due to the sinister designs of India and USA.

To understand current events, we need a new paradigm. The paradigm fostered by the mass media of a ‘balanced’ world consisting of competing interests, nations, ideologies and religions only gives us false confidence and traps us in a false matrix of “good guys vs. bad guys.”

As my readers know, I suspect that most “competing” groups/ideologies actually have been created or subverted by a single force: a satanic cult, the Illuminati (Sabbatean-Frankist Jews and cabalistic Freemasons.) This clique is empowered by a cartel of cartels, beginning with world central banking, based in London. It uses MI-6, the CIA, the Mossad and other “Intelligence” agencies as instruments and controls the media and most politicians.

The

Sabbatean-Frankists were a Jewish heresy that captured half the Jewish world in the 17th and 18th Century. They eschewed all morality preaching that good is evil and vice- versa. They believe that chaos and devastation will hasten the return of the Messiah. They went underground and prospered by intermarrying with non-Jews and assuming conventional Jewish or non-Jewish identities. The “Catholic” half-Jewish John Kerry or Madelaine Albright are examples.

My working hypothesis is that most wars/conflicts are orchestrated by this satanic cult. The same people secretly manipulate events on both sides to undermine “all collective forces except our own” (“The Protocols of Zion“) and establish world government tyranny (a.k.a. “globalization.”) In other words, an Occult Elite is waging war on humanity and we don’t even know it.

In the Protocols, the author, who I suspect was the Sabbatean Lionel Rothschild, writes that their goal is: “To wear everyone out by dissension, animosities, feuds, famine, inoculation of diseases, want, until the Gentiles sees no other way of escape except by appeal to our money and our power.” (Protocol 10) [And] “… enable us to absorb without disturbance all the governmental forces of the world and thus form a super-government.” (Protocol 5)

“Who will ever suspect then that ALL THESE PEOPLES WERE STAGE-MANAGED BY US ACCORDING TO A POLITICAL PLAN WHICH NO ONE HAS SO MUCH AS GUESSED AT IN THE COURSE OF MANY CENTURIES?” (Protocol 13, emphasis mine)

Creating conflict makes fiendish sense. If they were to declare their true intention, they would meet opposition from all sides. Instead they create and hide behind competing forces and manipulate the outcome ensuring that “true believers” (the uncorrupted) die in the process. Everyone is so busy fighting, they can’t see the real foe and the real agenda. The conspirators recognize each other through hand-signs.

I’ll start by mentioning some random conflicts that fit this paradigm. (Research them and see if I am right.) Then I’ll cite some more references to show that this strategy is deliberate.

CONFLICTS

I suspect the Labor, Women’s and US Gay and Negro Civil Rights Movement all fit this pattern. They were all sponsored by the bankers,and run by Masonic Jews or their dupes. While they addressed some legitimate injustices, their real purpose was to sow division.

Harold Rosenthal is credible when he says: “Through our national bank, the Federal Reserve, we extend book credit which we create from nothing to all local banks …[Thus] we bring industry, management and labour into our debt…and pit management against labor so they will never unite and attack us and usher in a debt-free industrial utopia.” (my emphasis)

Through control of the mass media, Rosenthal says we “have put issue upon issue to the American people. Then we promote both sides of the issue as confusion reigns. With their eyes fixed on the issues, they fail to see who is behind every scene. ”

Alan Stang deals with the true origins of Civil Rights in his book “It’s Very Simple.” I touch on it in

a masterful analysis of how the bankers used Masonic Jews to take over the Conservative end of the political spectrum. “Is Neo Conservatism a Jewish Movement?”

Global Warming is yet another created conflict. The Club of Rome talked about using it as a fabricated “enemy” 20 years ago. (See “The Vacuum” in “The First Global Revolution” 1991 by Alexander King.) On one side you have Al Gore, Illuminati in good standing. On the other side, you have films made by debunkers that are featured on the BBC, an Illuminati mouthpiece. Obviously this debate is certified “Masonic Kosher.”

Remember how Stalin exterminated much of the Soviet officer core in the late 1930’s on “faked evidence” from Reinhard Heydrich? I suspect Stalin knew the evidence was fake and was doing away with nationalists and cult outsiders. Similarly Stalin exterminated the cream of the Polish officer core at Katyn forest.I suspect Illuminati Nazis collaborated with Illuminati Communists.

I have no evidence but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Taliban was supported by the bankers through the Pakistani ISI, and the Iraqi insurgency through Saudi Arabia. The Sunnis are now on the US payroll. How does that work?

Vladimir Putin has a lot of fans. I’d love it if he were for real. Unfortunately, I suspect he’s been dealt the good guy role in a potential future world war. I suspect the US/British-Russian feud is for show only. The “tell” is the amount of Western investment in Russia and UK/EU dependence on Russian natural resources.

It appears that the Illuminati bankers sponsored the liberal and socialist (revolutionary) movements of the last 300 years in order to wrest power from the nobility and church, and to control society through the guise of “liberal democracy.”

In 1794 the Duke of Brunswick, issued a Manifesto based on confiscated Illuminati documents. He said, “The ferment that reigns among the people is their work….They began by casting odium on religion..They invented the rights of man …and urged the people to wrest from their princes the recognition of these supposed rights. The plan they formed for breaking all social ties and destroying all order was revealed in their speeches and acts. They deluged the world with a multitude of publications; they recruited apprenticeships of every rank and every position; they deluded the most perspicacious men by falsely alleging different intentions.” (Light-bearers of Darkness, p.10)

“Far back in ancient times we were the first to cry among the masses of the people the words “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” words many times repeated since these days by stupid poll-parrots…(26) In all corners of the earth the words “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” brought to our ranks, thanks to our blind agents,[i.e. dupes] whole legions who bore our banners with enthusiasm. And all the time these words were canker-worms at work boring into the well-being of the goyim, putting an end everywhere to peace, quiet, solidarity and destroying all the foundations of the goy States.

28. The abstraction of freedom has enabled us to persuade the mob in all countries that their government is nothing but the steward of the people who are the owners of the country, and that the steward may be replaced like a worn-out glove. 29. It is this possibility of replacing the representatives of the people which has placed at our disposal, and, as it were, given us the power of appointment.” (Protocol 1, emphasis mine)

CONCLUSION

Our political life is essentially an illusion. As early as 1823, Hoene Wronski wrote: “Secret societies are detached into groups distinct and apparently opposed, professing respectively and in turn the most contrary opinions of the day, so as to direct, apart and with confidence, all parties, political, religious, economic, and literary. They, in order to receive common direction, are again united to an unknown centre…an Unknown Supreme Committee who governs the world.” (Light-bearers of Darkness, p.2)

The lesson is not to avoid political activity, but to be very selective. The world is in the thrall of a satanic cult. The correct paradigm is humanity versus this cult, its agents and dupes. Unfortunately these are often people society considers a “success.”
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It persists for lack of regulation, work condition monitoring, and a growing demand for cheap labor enabling unscrupulous employers and criminal networks to exploit powerless workers for profit.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) defines forced labor as:

“….all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which said person has not offered himself voluntarily.”

Forced child labor is:

“(a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labor, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;”

“(b) the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances;”

“(c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties;” and

“(d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.”

The Free the Slaves.net’s definition is being “forced to work without pay under threat of violence and unable to walk away.” It reports:

— an estimated 27 million people are enslaved globally, more than at any other time previously;

— thousands annually trafficked in America in over 90 cities; around 17,000 by some estimates and up to 50,000 according to the CIA, either from abroad or affecting US citizens or residents as forced labor or sexual servitude;

— the global market value is over $9.5 billion annually, according to Mark Taylor, senior coordinator for the State Department’s Office to Monitor;

— “$90 is the average cost of a human slave around the world” compared to the 1850 $40,000 equivalent in today’s dollars;

— common terminology includes debt bondage, bonded labor, attached labor, restavec (or de facto bondage for Haitian children sent to households of strangers), forced labor, indentured servitude, and human trafficking;

— explosive population growth, mostly to urban centers without safety net or job security protections, facilitates the practice; and

— government corruption, lack of monitoring, and indifference does as well.

American Anti-Trafficking Efforts

US laws prohibit all forms of human trafficking through statutes created or strengthened by the 2000 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) with imprisonment for up to 20 years or longer as well as other penalties.

In April 2003, the Protect Act was passed (Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act). The law protects children and severely punishes offenders when enforced. It’s to prosecute American citizens and legal permanent residents who travel abroad for purposes of sexually trafficking minors without having to prove prior intent to commit the crime.

The 2000 law (reauthorized in 2005) provides tools to combat trafficking offenders worldwide. It also establishes the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office) and the President’s Interagency Task Force to help coordinate anti-trafficking efforts. The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) also is for victim protection. In addition, various other US agencies are involved, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) through its Rescue and Restore Victims of Human Trafficking public awareness campaign and by identifying victims.

The Department of Justice handles prosecutions, and along with DHS and the State Department, addresses various trafficking issues through the interagency Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center. Still, enforcement is often is lax or absent, at both federal and state levels, because offenders are powerful and those harmed are the “wretched of the earth,” mostly poor blacks, Latinos and Asians. As a result, the practice is rampant and growing. Below are examples of its forms.

Farmworker Slavery

In a March 2004 report, Oxfam America highlighted the growing problem in a report titled “Like Machines in the Fields: Workers without Rights in American Agriculture.” It’s a shocking account of how “Behind the shiny, happy images promoted by the fast-food industry with its never-ending commercials, there is another reality:”

— nearly two million overworked farmworkers living in “sub-poverty misery, without benefits, without the right to overtime,” a living wage, or other job protections, including for children;

— in Florida, it’s not uncommon to find instances of workers chained to poles, locked in trucks, physically beaten, and cheated out of pay; it’s pervasive enough for a federal prosecutor to have called the state “ground zero for modern-day slavery” in a New Yorker magazine article;

— John Bowe, author of “Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy,” calls Florida agriculture “an unsavory world” where workers like Adan Ortiz fear talking about their bosses because he has nightmares that they might “come after me with machetes and stuff;”

— basic US labor laws exclude farmworkers, including the right to organize; laws like the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRB) and 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA); also OSHA protections are lacking; the 1983 Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (AWPA or MSPA) provided modest but inadequate relief and none at all when it isn’t enforced; Oxfam reported that, except in California to a modest degree, “state laws perpetuate inequality,” especially in Florida and North Carolina;

— overall, enforcement at both federal and state levels is lax and has weakened in recent years; most notable are the lack of investigations, prosecutions, and resources allocated for either; in the case of undocumented workers, nothing in the law protects them;

— many serve as forced labor against their will in a modern-day version of slavery: terrorized by violent employers, watched by armed guards under conditions of near-incarceration, living overcrowded in “severely inadequate” barracks or trailers, often plagued with rust, mildew, filth, broken appliances, sagging or leaky roofs, non-working showers, and multiple occupants being over-charged up to $200 a week by unscrupulous employers; yet workers put up with it because in the words of one: “If we don’t work, we don’t eat;”

— the commercial power of giant buyers and retailers like Wal-Mart (selling 19% of US groceries) and Yum Brands (the world’s largest fast-food company) squeeze growers and suppliers for the lowest prices;

— increased competition from imports have had a similar effect, especially in winter months;

— yet while wages and prices to producers are squeezed, profits are passed up the distribution chain to corporate giants at the top.

Farmworkers have been punished as a result and are perhaps the poorest and most abused laborers in America. Around half of them earn less than $7500 annually. Lucky ones earn up to $10,000, in either case it’s far below the federal poverty threshold, and their wages have been stagnant since the 1970s.

Doing some of the worst and most dangerous jobs in America (from exposure to toxic chemicals and workplace accidents), poverty has forced them into sub-standing housing, temporary jobs, increased migrancy, and family separation.

Besides sub-poverty wages, around 95% get no Social Security, disability, or medical insurance benefits (let alone vacations or pensions) for themselves or their families. Women farmworkers face other abuses like male dominance, sexual harassment, or worse, while at the same time remain primary family caregivers.

Crop and livestock agricultural jobs exist throughout the country, but over half are concentrated in California, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Washington. Most farmworkers are young (between 18 – 44 or younger), male (about 80%), and Latino. They have little education, and many are recent undocumented immigrants (mostly from Mexico) forced north because of destructive trade laws like NAFTA.

Organizing efforts have won important victories but not enough to increase workers’ bargaining power under a fundamentally unfair system. So while achievements of organizations like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida (with over 2000 members) are impressive, they’re no match against agribusiness giants or Wal-Mart.

Nor can they ameliorate conditions in one of the country’s most hazardous occupations. Farmworker disability rates are three times than for the greater population. Around 300,000 laborers suffer pesticide poisoning annually, and many others endure accidents, musculoskeletal, and other type injuries (some chronic).

A 1990 North Carolina study found only 4% of workers had access to drinking water, hand-washing, and toilet facilities, a particularly dangerous situation for children and pregnant women.

Oxfam calls farmworker conditions today the equivalent of a “19th century plantation-style” model relying on field hands, rudimentary equipment, long hours, little pay, no benefits, under a basically “inhumane, anachronistic (system crying) out for reform.” But how when all levels of government turn a blind eye to the worst of abuses, and for the undocumented blame them for their own plight.

Domestic Servitude in America

Each year, many thousands, mostly women, arrive in America with temporary visas to work as live-in domestic workers – for the wealthy, foreign diplomats, or other domestic or foreign officials. They come to escape poverty or to earn money to send home to families. Often they’re exploited or victimized by unscrupulous traffickers who hold them in forced servitude, work them up to 19 hours a day, keep them practically incarcerated, pay them $100 or less a month, and often subject them to sexual abuse.

Undocumented workers have no protection, but even legal entrants have few. Because visas are employment-based, they’re obliged to one employer no matter how abusive, and if leave they lose their immigration status and are deported. As a result, few do or file complaints. Some who do are rarely protected because government agencies are lax in their monitoring and enforcement.

Live-in domestic workers are also excluded from labor law protections with regard to overtime pay and right to organize, strike, and bargain collectively. In addition, they’re unprotected by OSHA and against sexual harassment under Title VII workplace safeguards as it applies only to employers with 15 or more workers. In cases of foreign employers, they enjoy diplomatic immunity, even from criminal, civil, or administrative prosecutions.

As a result, special visa domestics endure human rights violations. Employers are immunized while workers are powerless to stop abuses like:

— assault and battery, including physical beatings and threats of serious harm;

— limited freedom of movement, including arbitrary and enforced loss of liberty by use of locks, bars, confiscation of passports and travel documents, chains, and threats of retaliation against other family members;

— health and safety issues, including unhealthy sleeping situations in basements, utility rooms, or other unsatisfactory places; unsafe working conditions endangering health; denial of food or proper nutrition; and refusal to provide medical care and having to work when ill;

— wage and amount of work concerns – US labor laws afford no protections so long hours, little rest, and low pay are common;

— privacy invasions – the UN General Assembly’s December 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that “(n)o one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence;” it applies to everyone, even live-in domestics on visas; nonetheless violations of ICCPR are common and migrants get no redress;

— psychological abuse – often highlighting employer superiority and worker inferiority to enforce control and render employees powerless; other abuses include insults, food restrictions, denying proper clothing, and various other demeaning practices; and

— servitude, forced labor, and trafficking – ICCPR and other international laws and instruments prohibit it, yet don’t effectively define “servitude” as distinguished from slavery; as a result, abusive labor relationships are inevitable; trafficking is specifically prohibited under the UN’s Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the (UN-adopted 2000) Convention against Transnational Organized Crime; nonetheless, the practice is rampant and growing; in the case of migrant domestic workers, abuse is widespread and greatly underreported.

Sex Slavery in America

It’s the largest category of forced labor in America and with good reason:

— it’s tied to organized crime and highly profitable;

— the demand for sex services, including from children, is high and growing; and

— the lack of safe and legal migration facilitates it.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) states that the average entry prostitution age is between 12 – 14. Shared Hope International documents modern-day sex trafficking and examines conditions under which it exists. It confirms that most victims are underage girls. A congressional finding estimated that between 100,000 – 300,000 children are at risk at any time. A DOJ assessment was that pimps control at least 75% of exploited minors by targeting vulnerable children using violence and psychological intimidation to hold them.

The Internet is a frequent recruitment tool. Other vulnerable victims are shelter and street youths, including runaways. An estimated 2.8 million children live on city streets, a third of whom are lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home. Familial prostitution is also common and involves the selling of a family member for drugs, shelter, and/or money.

The market includes prostitution, including with children, pornography, striptease, erotic dancing, and peep shows, often controlled by organized crime. The combination of legal and illegal sex generally is part of a larger portfolio of products and services that include drugs and drugs trafficking.

Sex traffickers usually recruit victims of their own nationality or ethnicity, and migrant smuggling facilitates it. In addition, state and federal laws too often conflict enough to withhold victim status from the abused, impede prosecutions, and result in too lenient sentences when they occur. Also, rarely are prostitution purchasers (including from children) arrested or prosecuted, and overall, law enforcement agencies face legal and systemic challenges that interfere with their ability or inclination to go after buyers. Society provides few protections for victims, including custodial shelters for young children, and as a result, sex services in America thrive.

Sweatshops and Factories

According to the Union of Needle Trades and Industrial Textile Employees, 75% of New York garment factories are sweatshops. The US Department of Labor says over 50% of all US-based ones are, the majority in the apparel centers of New York, California, Dallas, Miami, and Atlanta but others located offshore as well in American territories like Saipan, Guam and American Samoa where merchandise produced is labeled “Made in the USA.”

Competing with low-wage offshore producers pressures US producers to cut labor costs to a minimum, even by breaking the law, sometimes egregiously through forced labor. Like agriculture and domestic service, the sector is especially vulnerable as it often operates within the informal economy where regulatory enforcement is lax or absent. As a result, worker exploitation persists. Wages are sub-poverty. Overtime compensation is the exception, and work environments generally are poor to hazardous. Workers who complain or try to organize usually are fired and replaced by more amenable ones.

Starvation wages, long hours, unsafe working conditions, and no protections are standard practice in an industry long known for its labor abuses.

In 1995, two major scandals made headlines, one at home, the other offshore. On August 2, police raided an El Monte, California apartment complex in which 72 undocumented Thai immigrants were kept in forced bondage behind razor wire and a chain link fence. They’d been there for up to 17 years sewing clothes for some of the nation’s top manufacturers and retailers.

They were housed in crowded, squalid quarters. Armed guards imposed discipline, pressuring and intimidating them to work every day, around 84 hours a week for 70 cents an hour. Workers were forced to work, eat, sleep, and live in captivity. No unmonitored phone calls or uncensored letters were allowed, and everything bought came only from their captors at highly inflated prices. Seven operators were arrested and later convicted of conspiracy, kidnapping, involuntary servitude, smuggling, and harboring illegal immigrants.

Also in 1995, National Labor Committee investigators found teenage women, as young as 13, sewing clothing for Kathy Lee Gifford’s Global Fashion plant in Honduras. Pay was from 9 – 16 cents an hour under oppressive working conditions. Forced overtime was imposed to meet deadlines. Only two daily bathroom visits were allowed. Supervisors and armed guards applied pressure and intimidation to work faster on machines that were rust laden and prone to accidents. Attempts by the women to demand their legal rights were thwarted. Merchandise produced was for major US retailers like Wal-Mart.

American restaurant and hotel workers also work under onerous conditions and are underpaid. In hotels, nearly all housekeepers are women who are required to clean 15 or more rooms a day. Often they must skip meals and rest periods, work off the clock to meet quotas, and have a 40% higher injury rate than service workers overall as a result. According to US Department of Labor figures, they earn an average $8.67 an hour or about $17, 340 annually provided they work full-time.

Immigrants, mainly women, are especially vulnerable in hotels and restaurants. A June 2005 ACLU press release highlighted one example among many pertaining to a law suit brought by two immigrant waitresses against a New Jersey Chinese restaurant charging sex discrimination and labor exploitation.

Filed in June 2003, Mei Ying Liu and Shu Fang Chen charged that from May 2000 – November 2001 they were completely controlled by their employers, forced to work an average 80 hours a week, paid no wages or overtime, had to pay a kickback from tips received, faced gender and ethnic discrimination, were housed in an overcrowded, vermin-filled apartment, and were threatened with death when stopped working at the restaurant.

Guest Worker Trafficking on US Military Bases

Besides Halliburton’s exploited army of tens of thousands of foreign nationals in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the National Labor Committee (NLC) reported last July that “hundreds of thousands of foreign guest workers – among them 240,000 Bangladeshis – have been trafficked to Kuwait (under false promises of well-paid jobs, and) forced to work seven days a week (11 hours a day) at a US military base” under horrific conditions.

Stripped of their passports on arrival, they’re housed in overcrowded, squalid dorms with eight workers sharing small 10 x 10 rooms, paid 14 – 36 cents an hour, beaten and threatened with arrest when they complained, forced to use most of their wages for high-priced food, and the case of “Mr. Sabur” is typical. Hired by the Kuwait Waste Collection and Recycling Company to work at the Pentagon’s Camp Arifjan, his job was to clean the base – everything from offices and living spaces to tanks, rocket launchers and missiles.

He worked an 11-hour shift seven days a week and got a one-hour midnight break for supper. For this, he earned $34.72 a week, far less than he was promised, and he had to pay a Bangladesh employment agency 185,000 taka ($2697) for his three-year contracted job. His family sold everything possible for the money, still came up short, and had to borrow the rest from a neighbor.

On the job, the Kuwaiti company illegally withheld his first three months wages, forcing him to borrow money to survive. When he asked to be paid, he was beaten, and after an 80,000 worker strike, he was arrested, incarcerated for five days, beaten in prison, then deported to Bangladesh still wearing his torn, blood-stained clothing.

He was owed but never paid thousands of promised dollars in back wages, and he’s typical. NLC estimates that all 240,000 Bangladeshis have been cheated out of $1.2 billion, and the Pentagon is complicit in the crime. These same abuses are common on US bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, and likely other offshore locations as well. In the words of one Sri Lankan laborer for a Halliburton subcontractor in Iraq: “They promised us the moon and stars,” but instead gave us dirty work, low pay, long hours, bad food, and for the first three months held us in windowless warehouses near Baghdad’s airport with no money, and for some of them afterwards in tents even worse than the warehouses.

A Final Comment

This is the plight of America’s vulnerable and those we exploit abroad, whether in restaurants, hotels, agriculture, domestic work, the sex trade, or on US offshore military bases, and seldom do courts provide justice. It’s America’s dark side along with an appalling record of crimes and abuses, including imperial wars, torture, and looting the national wealth for criminal bankers and the rich at the expense of growing millions in need left wanting at the most perilous economic time in our history. America’s long and disturbing legacy, not at all one to be proud of.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

The massacre at the BDR head quarters has become an issue of politics recently. The government and their supporters and patrons have started playing game with such a tragic event of our history. They are trying to establish that the Islamist and nationalist parties were behind the killing. The motive has also been `invented’. It has been alleged that the motive was to thwart the government’s effort for trial of the so-called war criminals! With this peculiar and surprising `invention’ they have started an all out propaganda against the patriotic forces of the country.

The nation has not yet been able to recover from the terrible shock of the so-called mutiny at the BDR head quarters on February 25th. A fast recovery is not possible in fact. Because the nation has lost its brave, brilliant and patriot sons- 67 army officers were brutally murdered in the so-called mutiny. Such an orgy of carnage was really beyond anyone’s imagination, but nevertheless it has happened and the nation’s Army has suffered an irreparable loss.

Unfortunately the people have not been allowed to know about what really had happened at Pilkhana, who had masterminded such a heinous and dangerous massacre and what their motive was. The people could not gather correct information from the media also. In the mean time, confusing debates and arguments between the government and the patriotic political leaders have become a major cause of sorrow and frustration for the common people. The government has failed in another way to fulfill the peoples’ expectation. In spite of sincerely calling up on the political parties to be united and tackle the situation jointly, the government has, from the very beginning, rather started debating with the opposition political parties. The opposition parties too have become compelled to go in the path of confrontation. So the `battle’ began and the blame-game has been going on while the people remained in the dark with much disappointment.

The `battle’ began after the opposition political parties, especially the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Bangladesh Jamaat-E- Islami, raised some very important questions and demanded for answers. How the so-called mutineers dared to commit such a massive killing and why the government did not even try to prevent them, were the main questions. The government has presented an argument that they had `correctly’ decided to resolve the problem `politically’ and `peacefully’. But this has not satisfied any quarters, including of course the army officers. Begum Khaleda Zia, Leader of the Opposition in the Jatya Sangsad (National Parliament) asked the questions and strongly opined that since the so-called mutiny was a military problem, it should have been dealt with in the military way. But in spite of the Army’s complete preparations the government did not allow them to carry out a military operation. It should be mentioned that the RAB had arrived at the Pilkhana gate at about 10 am. They sought permission to move in but the Home Ministry did not permit them. Two Battalions of the Army’s 46 Brigade had also reached by 11 am. But they were directed not to move in. This time a big `no’ had come from the Chief of Army Staff, General Moin U Ahmed, it was alleged. Sheikh Hasina also did nothing even after receiving an SOS request from the D. G. of the BDR, Major General Shakil Ahmad.

Begum Khaleda Zia in fact echoed the common peoples’ sentiment in the Sangsad on March 1st. Bangladesh Jamaat-e- Islami and other patriotic parties and organizations have also expressed the same opinion. Even the retired Army Chiefs and Generals including the government’s coalition partner H. M. Ershad have publicly said that had the government allowed the Army to move in, the so-called mutiny would have come to an end within 20 minutes to half an hour. On the other hand the government `tried’ to resolve the problem `politically’ and `peacefully’- as if it was something like a general strike in a garment factory! This particular decision of the government had almost directly allowed the so-called mutineers to kill as many army officers as they wanted to kill. The killers also tortured the family members of the army officers, ransacked their houses and committed heinous offences like rape. Not only that, the government’s delay in reaching at a `peaceful understanding’ with the representatives of the killers had allowed them to escape safely. This has been authenticated by the officers who could save their lives. They have said that most of the killings had happened within the first hours in the morning, which could be avoided had the government allowed the Army to move in. On the other hand in the name of `peaceful’ and `political’ solution the government took controversial steps. The government’s steps made the situation more complex and the killers took full advantage of it. Thus the government totally failed to protect the lives, properties and dignity of the army officers and their family members.

It has been correctly alleged that the Prime Minister did not consult the military experts. In stead she depended utterly on Gen. Moin, whose real role and intention have been questioned by many. Sheikh Hasina’s decision to send Jahangir Kabir Nanak, a State Minister and Juba League President, as the Chief Negotiator has also caused serious debate. Nanak’s personal acquaintances and friendship with DAD Tauhid, a leader of the so-called mutiny, have been genuinely discussed in the news papers and TV channels. Being the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina allowed the leaders, Tauhid and 13 other armed killers to meet her, who were not properly dressed. They did not even wear their caps, which was a must. This and the subsequent events including the so-called dialogue had clearly indulged the killers. They were successful in buying necessary times from the Prime Minister and her negotiators to complete their mission. The argument of saving civilian casualties and properties could not gain any support, since the government failed to save the officers who mattered most during the event. A simple announcement could have vacated the adjacent areas and the Army too could have easily got in the BDR head quarters.

The experts and former senior army officers have confidently opined that the killers would not have even dared to confront the Army. They would have simply fled away and lives of many officers could be saved. It should be mentioned that the adjacent areas were astonishingly vacated on the second day by the local Awami League MP Barrister Fazle Noor Tapash, a nephew of Sheikh Hasina. But the motive was to create opportunity for the killers. The killers also utilized the opportunity and escaped safely.

On the other hand the government’s reaction to various questions, allegations and explanations has been very sharp and aggressive. In her speech in the Sangsad on 1st March, the Prime Minister alleged that there was a `political instigation’ in the events and the opposition parties were shouting because the `conspiracy’ to topple her government could not succeed. Criticizing the Leader of the Opposition Sheikh Hasina said that the so-called mutiny was a `game’ of those who have played with the army on various occasions in the past. It was a clear attack against the BNP and Begum Khaleda Zia. Sheikh Hasina also defended the government’s decision of political solution and said that since it was not an occasion like her son’s or daughter’s matrimony, she did not consider it necessary to invite the opposition leaders for consultation or help.

The Prime Minister’s speech in the Sangsad has come as another reason of doubt and disappointment. Such a harsh statement and attack on the opposition was not expected at this juncture. Her effort for searching any connection of the opposition parties in the events was seen as a tactic to divert the peoples’ attention from the failure of the government. Her arguments too were not acceptable. The conscious section of the people had to remember the instance of the former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Bajpayee during the Kargil war against Pakistan. Mr. Bajpayee had called up on the leaders of all parties and the leaders too responded positively. Even during the recent terrorist attack on the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, political leaders of India stood by the government’s side and resolved the crisis jointly. In Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina too could have created such an instance, had she called up on the leaders of all parties. But she did not, and acted unilaterally.

Another very significant point should be mentioned here. During the campaign involving the Islamist and nationalist parties of the country, it has been told that they organized the so-called mutiny to thwart and foil the process and effort to bring the so-called war criminals to justice. Even in her last speech on March 7th Sheikh Hasina has also repeated the same statement and alleged especially against the BNP and Jamaat-E-Islami. She said that the parties wanted to create a law and order situation, instigate a civil war and finally topple her government. It should be noted that Sheikh Hasina and her supporters have been using these points as `weapons’ against the BNP and Jamaat.

Interestingly, the anti-Bangladesh forces of India are also using the same `weapons’. In fact the Indian media has launched a total war against the patriotic forces of the country. Dailies including the Anandabazar and the Telegraph have been playing the leading role since the beginning of the so-called mutiny. They too have `invented’ the `hands’ of the BNP and Jamaat leaders behind the killing. But the information they mentioned did not strengthen their claims. In stead it has appeared that in the course of events the Indian government had to do many things. For example, in the wake of the so-called mutiny none else but the Foreign Minister Pronab Mukherjee had received an `explicit request’ from Dhaka and he instantly assured that India was `ready’ to come to the `rescue’ of Sheikh Hasina! India acted also very rapidly- the `Parachute Regiment’ of the Indian Army was brought overnight to West Bengal from Agra and the Air Force was kept on `high alert’ in Kolkata and Guahati of Assam. It should be mentioned that the `Parachute Regiment’ had airdropped the Indian Army and fought against Pakistan in Bangladesh in December, 1971. According to the Telegraph, India uses such Regiments when neibouring countries are in turmoil.

These information regarding the Indian government’s activities and preparations to come to `rescue’ Sheikh Hasina have been seen as very significant. The Indian media has used their country’s intelligence agencies as their sources of information. On the other hand, after the so-called mutiny was over and the killers escaped safely, `Guru’ Nanak disclosed a very significant information which has bewildered every Bangladeshi. According to him not only lakhs but crores and crores of taka was distributed among the killers by the conspirators. A question was raised instantaneously- how did Nanak alone discover this information? The reason of the question was simple- it is possible only for him or her or them who had been involved in both the conspiracy and the murders.

Was it then a `slip of tongue’ of `Guru’ Nanak? The next question is also very important- why Nanak did not inform the government, especially his dear leader Sheikh Hasina? How could he come to know that the Prime Minister was going to make none but him the Chief Negotiator? Had Sohel Taj, State Minister for Home Affairs, to leave the country and go to America for creating the necessary `space’ for Nanak? Sohel Taj has been staying in the United States since February 18th. This is really mysterious that the State Minister was not seen in a situation where his presence and actions were essential and where in stead of Nanak he should have played the role of the Chief Negotiator.

As time passed on the question about the real motives of the so-called mutineers has also come to the prominence. Because, besides killing, the so-called mutineers were seen spreading malice especially against the Army. The clear intention was to mobilize the people against the patriotic Armed Forces of the country. In fact they tried to weaken the nation and posed a serious threat to Bangladesh‘s independence and sovereignty. Hence the patriotic political parties have strongly opined that the so-called mutiny was a conspiracy to make Bangladesh a failed state. The effort in this regard has been going on for a very long time. A particular group of anti-Bangladesh forces have been trying to identify Bangladesh as a terrorist country. But they have failed so far. They wanted to use the land and water of the country for their expansionist purposes, but the patriotic political parties resisted.

After the consecutive failures they had decided to damage and gradually destroy the country’s brave Armed Forces so that the people and the parties become compelled to fulfill their evil desires. The so-called BDR mutiny was a part of that anti-Bangladesh conspiracy and those foreign forces were involved in it, who are trying to identify Bangladesh as a failed state and a terrorist country. They wanted to destroy the BDR first to make the border a free zone. In the second phase they wanted to bring the Army in the streets. They thought that after seeing their officers’ killing the Army would certainly react and topple the government. Had the Army really snatched the power the Indian Army would have come to `rescue’ Sheikh Hasina and a war would have been inevitable. And as the superior power India would have won that war, it was assumed. The consequence can be easily imagined- Bangladesh would have become a vassal state of India.

But in spite of a well planned conspiracy India could not succeed. The brave and brilliant Army and the Armed Forces in general have foiled the conspiracy. This failure has made India and her friends and agents in Bangladesh mad and lunatic. They have even lost their common senses and started a serious campaign against the Islamist and nationalist forces. One can easily understand the reason of their propaganda. Because, the Islamist and nationalist forces have been struggling to keep the independence and sovereignty of Bangladesh unharmed. The arguments like thwarting the so-called war criminals’ trial, creating a law and order situation, instigating a civil war and finally toppling the Awami League government were in fact `manufactured’ to divert the common peoples’ attention. Every Bangladeshi should understand that the so-called mutiny was intrinsically linked with the country’s independence and sovereignty and some foreign forces were involved in it. Fingers have correctly been pointed at India. It is high time to ensure that such a killing and mutiny do not happen again.

The following special points should be considered carefully to understand the conspiracy and to identify the real killers:

1. Sheikh Hasina was supposed to move to the old `Gano Bhaban’ where renovation works are going on. But in stead she had suddenly moved from `Sudha Sadan’ of Dhanmondi near Pilkhana to `Jamuna’ recently.

2. Sheikh Hasina had refused to attend the annual dinner of the BDR scheduled for that night.

3. Sohel Taj, State Minister for Home Affairs was sent to America on 18th of March. If he was present then `Guru’ Nanak would not have got the chance of becoming the Chief Negotiator. Did Sohel Taj deny to become a part of the conspiracy?

4. What Sheikh Rehana has been doing in Bangladesh for such a long time? Is she performing the role of the Chief Coordinator? It should be mentioned that India depends much on her than Sheikh Hasina.

5. The Indian High Commissioner Pinak Ranjan Chakraborti was not seen in public after the incident took place. On the other hand usually he talks too much on every issue of Bangladesh. Does his silence indicate anything?

6. What Jainal Hazari is doing after returning from India? For, his return and the so-called mutiny have coincided mysteriously.

7. Sheikh Hasina did not respond positively even after receiving an SOS from Gen. Shakil. Her Military Adviser Maj. Gen. (Retd.) Tariq Siddiqui also ignored many requests. But why?

8. In spite of going to Pilkhana or staying in Cantonment, why did Gen. Moin spend hours after hours at `Jamuna’- the Prime Minister’s office? He did neither respond to any requests from the endangered army officers nor did he give any effective advice to Sheikh Hasina. He even ordered the Army not to move in Pilkhana. Was he then allowing the killers to complete their mission?

9. The Home Minister Sahara Khatun visited Pilkhana several times. But she never enquired about the army officers and did not try for their release. Why?

10. Who had made the `explicit request’ to Pronab Mukherjee to help and `rescue’ Sheikh Hasina?

11. Why the Indian Army had taken all preparations for a war?

12. Now it is a known fact that many killers spoke in their own languages, not in Bangla. Who were they?

13. Nanak was a friend of Tauhid, Mirza Azam was a brother-in-law of Shaikh Abdur Rahman and Col. Guljar was responsible for the arrest and death of this JMB leader. And Col. Guljar is still missing. Were the appointments of Nanak and Azam as negotiators pre-planned?

14. How could the Indian media echo the statements and allegations of Sheikh Hasina? Was it a result of the same plan?

These are the most important points which will provide the correct answers regarding the so-called BDR mutiny and killing of army officers. A large section of people even believe that a `Sweet Revenge’ of 1975 has been taken through the Pilkhana massacre. We do not want to comment on that. But it must be understood that neither the BNP nor the Jamaat had anything to do in the events. The points mentioned above should be sufficient to authenticate it.

** Ahmad Ashiq-ul Hamid is a Columnist and Researcher of political history of Bangladesh. He can be reached at < ahmadashiqulhamid@ yahoo.com>